MICKEY MOUSE NUMBERS IN WORLD HISTORY

Transcription

1 MICKEY MOUSE NUMBERS IN WORLD HISTORY

2 Also by D. C. M. Platt FINANCE, TRADE AND POLITICS IN BRITISH FOREIGN POLICY, THE CINDERELLA SERVICE: British Consuls since 1825 LATIN AMERICA AND BRITISH TRADE BUSINESS IMPERIALISM, : An Inquiry based on British Experience in Latin America (editor) FOREIGN FINANCE IN CONTINENTAL EUROPE AND THE USA, 'ARGENTINA, AUSTRALIA AND CANADA: Studies in Comparative Development, (editor with Guido di Tel/a) 'THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ARGENTINA, (editor with Guido di Tella) 'BRIT AIN'S INVESTMENT OVERSEAS ON THE EVE OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR: The Use and Abuse of Numbers 'SOCIAL WELFARE, : Australia, Argentina and Canada Compared (editor) Also published by Macmillan

3 Mickey Mouse Numbers in World History The Short View D. C. M. Platt Professor of the History of Latin America University of Oxford M MACMILLAN PRESS

4 D. C. M. Platt 1989 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1989 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied, or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended), or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 33-4 Alfred Place, London WC1E 7DP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published 1989 Published by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Platt, D.C.M. (Desmond Christopher St. Martin) Mickey Mouse numbers in world history. 1. History-Statistical Methods I. Title ISBN ISBN (ebook) DOI /

5 Keep well the Hermetic Decalogue, which runs as follows: Thou shalt not do as the dean pleases. Thou shall not write thy doctor's thesis On education. Thou shall not worship projects nor Shalt thou or thine bow down before Administration. Thou shalt not answer questionnaires Or quizzes upon World-Affairs, Nor with compliance Take any test. Thou shalt not sit With statisticians nor commit a social science. Thou shalt not live within thy means Nor on plain water and raw greens. If thou must choose Between the chances, choose the odd: Read The New Yorker, trust in God; And take short views. W. H. Auden, Under Which Lyre: A Reactionary Tract for the Times (Phi Beta Kappa Poem, Harvard, 1946)

6 Contents Preface and Acknowledgements Introduction ix 1 PART I THE SOWERS 1 The Recorders 11 The first generation: Porter, McCulloch and Macgregor 11 Michael G. Mulhall 14 The moderns: B. R. Mitchell and William Woodruff 19 The early demographers 20 World commerce and demography: the Woytinskys 23 2 Governments and International Institutions 26 The statistics of foreign countries before 1914: Britain's Board of Trade 26 The League of Nations 30 The United Nations 34 PART II THE REAPERS 3 The Great Generation F. W. Taussig and Jacob Viner The 'Stockholm Group' and Gunnar Myrdal Ragnar Nurkse W. A. Lewis Colin Clark C. K. Hobson and A. H. Imlah Simon Kuznets 4 The Moderns Paul Lamartine Yates Alfred Maizels Angus Maddison Phyllis Deane and W. A. Cole Paul Bairoch vii

7 Vlll Contents Generalists: S. B. Saul, A. J. Brown, H. Myint and L. J. Zimmerman 61 5 Econometrics 64 The practitioners: Birnberg, Resnick and Hanson II 64 The professionals (I): Douglass C. North and Robert Paul Thomas 65 The professionals (II): Irving B. Kravis and N. F. R. Crafts 66 6 The 'World System' 71 Fernand Braudel 71 Arghiri Emmanuel 74 Immanuel Wallerstein 75 Samir Amin 76 Andre Gunder Frank 77 Conclusion 81 ~~ ~

8 Preface and Acknowledgements This book, like Latin in the professor's opening lecture, is 'the relentless foe of woolly minds'. The point is that thoughts and mistakes of one generation lead too easily to the conclusions of another. A Victorian encyclopedist finds an admirer in a Nobel Laureate (1971); a second Laureate (1974) quotes the first; a third (1977) and a fourth (1979) quote all and sundry; 'development historians' take their conclusions from the wilder shores of 'world' historical demography. This has often proved difficult to trace. I have tried my best. An asterisk (*) before names indicates that the approach to numbers is questioned in the text; bold numbers in the index proclaim the precise spot. lowe much to my students, friends and colleagues in Oxford and elsewhere. I am grateful, as ever, to my wife Sylvia for her constant help and support, and to my friend Stephen Cohn for suggesting the perfect epigraph. Above all, I am indebted to those great libraries known collectively as the Bodleian - 'those arsenals of divine vengeance', in A. E. Housman's happy phra~e. The epigraph, from Edward Mendelson (ed.), W. H. Auden: Collected Poems, is reprinted by kind permission of Faber & Faber Ltd and Random House, Inc. St Antony's College Oxford D. C. M. PLAIT ix