Economic History at a Crossroads: Reconsidering Methods, Spaces, and Peoples

Demand without desire: Food and the history of capitalism

“…As with most such discussions, what emerged was a portrait of heterogeneity that some found stimulating and others destabilizing. Three years later, in a special issue of the Journal of the Early Republic on the reemergence of economic history, Cathy Matson noted, “even with the history of capitalism there is a strong critique emerging about the pitfalls of generalizing about the emergence of something few of us agree about how to define or analyze” (Matson, , p. 603). Consensus had not emerged—a good sign that the field had more to contribute.…”