German Historicism in North America: A New Review of Materials from Henry Walcott Farnam and Jack Carroll Myles

This work analyzes the perception that early twentieth-century American economists had of the influence of German Historicism on the development and institutionalization of American economics from the 1880s to the 1900s. Starting from the first two quantitative analyses of the migration of young American economists to Germany for post-graduate training, made by Henry Walcott Farnam and by Jack Myles in, respectively, 1908 and 1956, the article presents for the first time a complete transcription of both Farnam’s archival material and Myles’s data. Specifically, the article proposes a survey of the Farnam papers from the various perspectives that, for contemporary historiography, represent the signs of the development and institutionalization of American economics along German lines. The particular focus of the essay concerns the extent and nature of the gap between our image today of the German influence on early twentieth-century American economics and the image that prevailed of that influence among early twentieth-century American economists. Jel classification