Contribution to a Panel on ‘The Big Questions and Research Challenges in the economic history of Australia and New Zealand?’ AEHB Conference, Sydney, 14 February, 2007.
Keywords: Political Economy & History;
I have been asked to offer a New Zealand perspective on some of the big questions facing New Zealand economic history. My responses are mainly on the supply-side. Faced with the list of possible questions, I am reminded on Winnie-the-Pooh who when visiting Rabbit was asked ‘Honey or condensed milk with your bread?’ was so excited that he said, ‘Both,’ and then, so as not to seem greedy, he added, ‘But don’t bother about the bread, please.’ My reaction to the circulated list of issues is the same: ‘all of them’. But we must prioritise.
Because New Zealand is only a fifth of the size of Australia, we cannot expect the same degree of covering everything. There will be gaps, and we wont have the same intense reworking of topics and periods which Australia can afford. Instead, we will be grateful for monographs, like Hazel Petrie’s Chiefs of Industry, which fills in some of Maori economic history in the middle of the nineteenth century, although what happened before and after remains largely a mystery, hile regional differences were probably more nuanced than Hazel was able to tease out. The issue then is how to get more of such work done?
That requires more scholarly interest in economic history. As I said in my main paper – A New Economic History of New Zealand: Some Issues , New Zealand general historians are not greatly interested in economic history, perhaps because of limitations in their vision. (Some seem to think that converting a historical price into its current equivalent is all that required.) It is good though to see the exceptions – general historians like Hazel and Jim McAloon – tackling economic history topics intelligently and energetically. We need more of them.
We also need more economic historians in our universities. That means attracting more students. It would be good if general historians encouraged their students to take ECON 101 (although I acknowledge it is often dreadfully taught), and then to do some economic history papers. We need more inspiring teachers. Last evening Bruce McComish and Ian McLean were recalling with great affection John Gould of Victoria University of Wellington in the 1960s. It reminded me of my debts to British economic and social historian Barry Supple and to Graham Miller of the University of Canterbury.
Another source of students and teaching is business history. It is good to see a group developing around the Auckland Business School. Business histories in New Zealand are typically written by general historians, and tend to be without economic history, anecdotal, and often celebratory. In contrast I recall Barry Supple’s history of the Guardian Royal Insurance in which he also used to write a history of the nineteenth century insurance industry. Guardian Royal Insurance could not have asked for more: their history recalled 30 years later on the other side of the world. That is not the fate of celebratory business histories.
The third source of students is economics itself. We treat economics students badly if we teach only a highly theoretical economics with no sensitivity to institutional differences. Ric Garside is challenging Otago students by asking whether Japan’s different economic institutions were important in its economic success. Les Oxley of the University of Canterbury sees economic history as a source of material for applied economic research, although he is better than those econometricians who simply see it as source of data for cranking through mechanistic a-institutional econometrics.
Public Policy students need some economic history too, again to avoid being trapped into an a-theoretical or rigid institutional framework. The public histories, such as those John Singleton are writing, are thus also important as economic history to reaching out to those involved in public policy.
I’ve stressed the role of teaching because that has to be the foundation for research in New Zealand. Currently research is not well supported or funded. To give but one example: I have just applied for research funding but there was no single subject group which covered my topic of an general economic history of New Zealand, and I had to apply to three groups – Economics and Human and Behavioural Sciences for economics, Humanities for history, and Social Sciences for business studies. One shant be surprised if the application falls between all three stools.
Finally, moving from the supply-side, I want to say it is crucial New Zealand economic history is done in comparison with the history of other economies. You may think that some of New Zealand is so particular to its experience, there is no parallel with anywhere else. But when Hazel Petrie was studying Maori Tribal business she looked at, among other places, Hawaii where King Kamehameha was doing similar (but earlier) things.
If we don’t look elsewhere and do the comparisons, we fall into an isolationist trap. We will think we are exceptional when we are not, and miss when we are really exceptional.