Ohio History Journal


1

1.

The OHIO HISTORICAL Quarterly

VOLUME 69 ?? NUMBER 1 ?? JANUARY 1960

 

 

 

Recent Writings on

Midwestern Economic History

 

By HARRY R. STEVENS*

 

 

 

 

ACADEMIC HISTORIANS OF MIDWESTERN ECONOMY have

studied their subject long and productively, but having estab-

lished at an early date certain approaches to their material

and forms in which to present it that were quite satisfactory,

they have continued to make use of them with surprising

tenacity.1 Soon after they began to work, in the 1880's, they

developed three major forms: first, the monograph, article,

or book centered on a specific topic such as taxation, land

laws, money, or railroads, which could be easily identified in

the source materials they were exploring; second, the regional,

state, or local history in which economic subjects were treated

as fragments interspersed among political, social, religious,

military, cultural, and biographical materials; and third, the

general survey of national economic development and the

survey, nation-wide in geographical scope, dealing with such

broad economic fields as industry or transportation, in which

midwestern material appeared without regional identification

* Harry R. Stevens is associate professor of history at Ohio University. He is

the author also of a bibliographical essay on recent writings on midwestern

political history, The Middle West (Washington, 1958).

1 On midwestern economic history of the frontier periods, see Robert E. Riegel,

"American Frontier Theory," Journal of World History, III (1956), 356-380;

Gene M. Gressley, "The Turner Thesis--A Problem in Historiography," Agri-

cultural History, XXXII (1958), 227-249; Norman J. Simler, "The Safety-

Valve Doctrine Re-Evaluated," ibid., 250-257; R. Carlyle Buley, The Old North-

west: Pioneer Period, 1815-1840 (Indianapolis, 1950).