On Avoiding Babel

Abstract

More and more it seems that presidential addresses are an occasion for reflecting on matters of method and on the nature of scholarly disciplines. Perhaps this is because these addresses are usually given after dinner, and sated audiences are notoriously indifferent to specialized scholarship. But today we are inaugurating an innovation and have scheduled this talk for an earlier hour. This is not because we feared the membership would be too sleepy after eating to pay attention—you may be just as sleepy after a long day of papers and discussions—but rather to free you all for the gastronomic and touristic pleasures of New Orleans by night. And so, if I may presume on your gratitude for this thoughtfulness, I should like to put before you some of my own reflections on the character and direction of our discipline. I do so the more readily because I am the first president of the Association in some years now to have come to economic history from the side of history. This, I may say, is in itself a capsule symptom of the changes in the profession.

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