Editor’s Introduction
THE History of Economic Analysis, upon which Joseph A.Schumpeter worked during the
last nine years of his life and which he had not quite finished, was the result of his
intention to translate, revise, and bring up to date the ‘little sketch of doctrines and
methods’ (Epochen der Dogmen—und Methodengeschichte) written for the first volume
of Max Weber’s Grundriss, which was published in 1914.
1
This was a long essay (about
60,000 words) of a little more than a hundred pages which was divided into four parts or
chapters. An examination of the table of contents will show that these four parts or
chapters cover very briefly the same general topics that are treated in much more detail in
Parts II, III, and IV of the 1200-page History of Economic Analysis. The first two, which
are concerned with (1) the development of economics from the work of the philosophers
and the popular discussion and (2) the discoveries in economics associated with the
physiocrats, Turgot, and Adam Smith, are discussed in a single part in the present work
(Part II: From the Beginnings to 1790). The third and fourth divisions in the two works
are roughly parallel. The four main headings in the Epochen were as follows:
I. Die Entwicklung der Sozialökonomik zur Wissenschaft (The Development of
Economics as a Science).
II. Die Entdeckung des wirtschaftlichen Kreislaufs (The Discovery of the Circular Flow
of Economic Life).
III. Das klassische System und seine Ausläufer (The Classical System and its Offshoots).
IV. Die historische Schule und die Grenznutzentheorie (The Historical School and the
Marginal Utility Theory).
The old essay had been out of print; it had never been translated from German into
English; many people had been interested in it and had urged a translation. After
herculean labor, J.A.S. had finished his monumental Business Cycles in 1938 and sought
relaxation in Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, which he regarded as distinctly a
‘popular’ offering that he expected to finish in a few months. He completed it some time
in 1941. In the meantime he began to give a half course in the History of Economic
Thought at Harvard. He gave this course for the first time in the fall term, 1939 and for

history, theory, and such applied fields in economics as money, cycles, public finance,
socialism. I believe also that the war had something to do with it. I remember his telling
one or two friends that he found work on the History a rather soothing occupation for
wartime. It removed him temporarily from a grim reality which grieved him beyond
measure because he was convinced it would destroy the civilization he loved.
As always he wrote out everything in his own hand and kept everything that he wrote.
It is possible to see, therefore, how the early treatments became more and more elaborate.
He probably began writing the History in 1941. During the years 1942 and 1943 he seems
to have had typed a good many chapters and sections, most of which were subsequently
revised. The only substantial parts of the History written in the early years which were
not later rewritten are the chapter The ‘Mercantilist’ Literature, which was typed in June
1943, the chapter on Sozialpolitik and the Historical Method, part of which was typed in
January 1943 and the rest in December 1943, and the section on Senior’s Four Postulates
at the beginning of Chapter 6 of Part III (General Economics: Pure Theory). These, too,
would probably have been revised or rewritten had J.A.S. lived to complete the History.
Occasionally a few pages of an earlier version were incorporated in later versions. This
process is described in some detail in the Appendix.
As time went on, he began to emphasize that this was a history of economic analysis
and not a history of economic thought. He makes this clear in a brief description which
he wrote early in 1949 for his English publishers, Allen & Unwin, in which he stated:
This book will describe the development and the fortunes of scientific
analysis in the field of economics, from Graeco-Roman times to the
present, in the appropriate setting of social and political history and with
some attention to the developments in other social sciences and also in
philosophy. The ideas on economic policy that float in the public mind or
may be attributed to legislators and administrators, whether or not
embodied in elaborate systems, such as liberalism or solidarism and the
like, which are commonly referred to as economic thought, come in only
as part of that setting. The subject of the book is the history of the efforts
to describe and explain economic facts and to provide the tools for doing

course on Advanced Economic Theory
3
he discussed many of the problems which are
written about in Part IV, Chapter 7 (Equilibrium Analysis) and in Part V. He also taught
at Harvard a course on Socialism and sometimes a course on Business Cycles and the
course on Money. At the University of Bonn, J.A.S. held the Chair of Public Finance, but
2 ‘The Past and Future of the Social Sciences.’ A revised and enlarged version was published by
Duncker & Humblot (1915) in the Schriften des Sozialwissenschaftlichen Akademischen Vereins
in Czernowitz.
3 At the beginning of the reading list for this course (Economics 203a) in the fall term of 1948–9
occurs the following brief description:

also conducted a seminar which was concerned largely with theory, including the theory
of money, and with epistemology. While at Yale for a year, he taught the course in
International Trade. Not only his courses, but also his many articles on almost every
aspect of economics, his numerous book reviews, his biographical essays, his books—all
were part of the preparation for writing the History of Economic Analysis. Even his
reading for pleasure and recreation—he loved to read biographies, preferably those in
many volumes—contributed to that fascinating knowledge of men, events, and
backgrounds which is apparent throughout the History and which will liven for some
readers sober discussions on fine points of economic analysis.
No part of the manuscript was in final form but some parts were more nearly complete
than others. The three main Parts (II, III, and IV) were practically finished, with the
exceptions noted in the Appendix; the introductory Part I and the concluding Part V were
being written at the very end. The last thing written, at the close of 1949, was apparently
the chapter on Keynes and Modern Macroeconomics at the end of Part V. This was left
behind to be typed when he went to Taconic for Christmas and to New York for the
meetings of the American Economic Association. On his return from the meetings, he
started to write up his address, ‘The March into Socialism,’ and also to read the typescript
of Part III of the History. He left several pages of notes for revisions in the first three or

the days and weeks were never long enough to do all the things he planned to do—his
teaching, his consultations, his reading, his writing, his correspondence.
I conceived my editorial task to be the simple one of presenting as complete and
accurate a version of what J.A.S. actually wrote as possible but not to attempt to complete
what he had not written. No outline of the whole work existed, and I had read none of it
before his death because J.A.S. wished me to begin with the introduction, upon which he
was working, and to read the whole work in its proper order. The material was found in
many places—some of it in file boxes, some of it piled on shelves—in the Cambridge
study on Acacia Street, in the Taconic study, and a little of it in his office at Littauer
Center. It took me two or three months to discover that the History was nearly completed,
and sections or subsections kept turning up for some time. The initial fitting together of
the pieces was made difficult by the fact that the manuscript pages were often not
numbered at all, and that the typescript was not numbered consecutively from the
beginning but only in small batches as typed. J.A.S. used only the first typescript for the
publisher. He never bothered with a carbon copy for himself. Fortunately the various
people who typed the manuscript kept a carbon copy, and these carbon copies were
stacked in a room on the third floor of the Acacia Street house. Some of these—those
done in 1943 and 1944 especially—were dated. I kept looking until I found manuscript
and a first typescript to match the carbons. In a number of cases, the carbons represented
early treatments subsequently discarded or partially incorporated in later versions. As I
read the whole work over and over again I found that, though no outline or table of
contents had been written out, such an outline existed within the text. There was a minor
complication due to the fact that the number of chapters originally planned was reduced
from eight to seven in the case of Part II and from ten to eight in the case of Part IV. In
the end, however, I had almost no difficulty in determining where each section or
subsection belonged or in deciding which was the latest of two or more versions. These
problems are discussed in the Appendix.
The task was immensely complicated by the length of the book. Even though I am an
economist with some editorial experience, it was not easy to put together so long a work
dealing with so many economists, writing in so many languages over so long a period. In

numbered his sections. As time went on, he added titles for both sections and subsections.
Occasionally he left a blank where he had not made a final decision. The titles supplied
by the editor were based on the text and are all enclosed in square brackets. There are
both author’s comments and editor’s notes in square brackets, but it is almost always
possible to distinguish between them. The author’s comments are usually in the midst of
quotations, whereas the editor’s material occurs as complete sentences at the end of
notes, as complete footnotes, or as a complete paragraph in the text printed in the
footnote type. Where there is danger of confusion, the initials ‘J.A.S.’ or the abbreviation
‘Ed.’ are used.
There are some repetitions, of which J.A.S. was well aware, and some omissions of
material promised ‘above’ or ‘below.’ For the most part, I did not attempt to eliminate
repetitions except such as were very close together and obvious. When the same article
was quoted several times in different connections or the same idea expressed several
times in different parts of the text, I did not feel competent to remove some references
and leave others, although the author himself would have done so. I have attempted to
call attention in footnotes to the more important omissions, which were the consequence
of some parts of the work being not quite complete. At the suggestion of Richard
M.Goodwin, I also called attention in footnotes to some of the other writings of the
author which had a bearing on problems under discussion, since J.A.S. hardly ever
referred to his own work either in his teaching or in his writing. Other people could
doubtless have done this better but no one else had the time to go through this long work
again and again.
Occasionally it was impossible to read a word or a word was omitted or a sentence
was incomplete. I dealt with such problems to the best of my ability. The vocabulary used
was extensive and many an unusual English word had to be tracked down in the great
Oxford Dictionary. Many of the foreign titles quoted were not to be found in any of the
Harvard Libraries, nor were they listed by the Library of Congress. By using various
foreign book lists and with the help of scholars in this country and in Europe, I was able
eventually to verify almost all the authors and titles.
For the most part, J.A.S. was specific about the editions used where this was

consequence of a misunderstanding between the printer and publisher on the one hand
and the editor on the other. All the indented material should have been set in footnote
type (not indented) as being supposedly of lesser interest to the average reader. It will be
recalled that J.A.S. was attempting to write a history which could be published in one
volume of possibly six or seven hundred pages. As time went on, however, his treatment
became more and more elaborate, and he was aware of the fact that the book was getting
too long—also that he was treating subjects which might not interest the average reader.
He therefore decided to write the book on two levels, with the more or less technical
material, the epistemological and philosophical discussions, and the biographical
sketches set in small type so that they would take up less space and so that they could be
easily skipped. He indicated this by having them typed in single space like the footnotes.
The printer, having chosen an appropriate type for the book, decided that there would be
too much of the small or footnote type and evolved the plan of putting this ‘secondary’
material in the text type but indented, thus reversing what the author had intended to be
the relative importance of this material. Unfortunately this plan was not made clear to me
and nearly half the History was in galleys before I saw any proof. Resetting all this would
have involved both considerable expense and considerable delay. I therefore let it stand
for the most part and had only small sections of incomplete or very technical discussion
reset in small type. A glance at pages 414–18, 449–52, and 464–9, where Comte, Mill’s
Logic, and Longfield, Thünen, and John Rae are discussed, will illustrate the kind of
material which the author intended to have subordinated. I am not sure that he was
always right in his emphasis, especially with reference to the biographical sketches,
which appeal to most people who have read them.
In the rest of the History (the last two chapters of Part III and Parts IV and V), I
divided the ‘secondary’ material between the text type and the footnote type, with only
two or three ‘philosophical’ discussions indented as had been done earlier. The
biographical sketches, some of which were rather long, were almost all printed in the
larger rather than in the smaller type, as originally intended. I did this because I was
persuaded that it would be difficult to read so much material in the very small footnote
type already chosen, although this change was, of course, contrary to my policy of

been barely started. Dr. Robert Kuenne undertook the difficult and extensive task of
preparing the subject index; he also completed the author index and co-ordinated the two.
The publishers are deeply grateful to Professor Wassily Leontief for his help in
making publication possible.
PART I
INTRODUCTION
SCOPE AND METHOD