The First Dissemination of German Historicism in North-America: Further Evidence from Richard T. Ely's Correspondence with Henry W. Farnam

The influence of German Historismus in the development and institutionalization of American economics in the years from 1870 to the first decade of the twentieth century is now something of a textbook commonplace (Dorfman 1955; 1969). In this story, Richard Theodore Ely1 deserves a special mention because of his leading role in the establishment of the “American Economic Association” (AEA) in 1885 and his vision of economics as an ethical discipline, which later became one of the benchmarks of the American Progressive Era. Archival research, however, allows us to restate, at least in part, the standard story of the impact of German historicism on American economics. As we shall argue, at the beginning of the twentieth century, Ely’s perception of this influence on his economic theory and method was less significant than we would today have expected.