Maine and Texas.

This paper discusses about the economic analysis and economic history of Maine and Texas. The author wants to contrast the aims of history and those of social science. A lecture by the historian, Leonard Krieger, changed the view of the nature of history. There was then much discussion of the role of social science in history in general. Krieger was regarded as among the historians most sympathetic to social science. But in his lecture he made clear that history could not be regarded as simply a branch of social science. Its aims were different. It sought to study the individual case, while social science aimed at general principles. Social science, whether economics or another, might indeed be useful and even vital in interpreting a past event. A use of history in the development of economic analysis is a definition of its historical conditioning. Before economic analysis had much of an effect on economic history, historians debated whether and which earlier periods could be described as capitalist.