War Economics

A Bibliographical Approach

Bibliographic Data

ID9728370
AuthorsEmily Rosenbaum (corresponding author), E M Rosenbaum
Year1942
Volume9
Issue33
Pages64
Publication date1942-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueEconomica (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0013-0427 • E-ISSN: 1468-0335
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2549876
OpenAlexW2321421278
LanguageEN
References cited23

It is impossible to ascertain how much of the policy of any state has a reference to war, or to national safety. Our legislator,' says the Cretan in Plato, 'thought that nations were by nature in a state of hostility: He took his measures accordingly; and observing that all the possessions of the vanquished pertain to the victor, he held it ridiculous to propose any benefit to his country, before he had provided that it should not be conquered.' Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Edinb. I767, Part III, Sect. V (Cf. Plato, Laws, ed. Loeb, vol. I, P. 7, with a more elaborate translation). BY war economics we mean here not economic warfare, but the preparation and the utilisation of the economic resources of a country for the purposes of war. Economic warfare, including blockade, pre-emption and many other techniques, is only a part of this general task. Until the first world war English and American literature possessed no theory of war economics expressly formulated as a political economy of war . Professor Pigou's Political Economy of War, published first in London in 192I and republished in a revised form in 1940, is according to the express intention of the author more an ' anatomy and physiology of the economic system in war than an attempt to add a full-sized theory of war economics as such to an analysis of the working of economic processes under more normal conditions. The book was originally written for the economist and certainly not as a mental preparation for another war, although its serene wisdom may prove very helpful to the politician and administrative official now. Although priority in the development of a theory of war economics must be ascribed to continental writers, it has nevertheless, as is the case with so many continental institutions, English roots in what Sir William Petty was probably the first to call Political Arithmetick. And this in turn has its forerunners in the early statistical surveys done by wary citizens of the states of mediaval Italy. Giovanni Botero in his Relazioni Universali (159I and later) sizes up in figures the worldly powers of emperors and kings, and his work was followed

Economic history · Economics · Epistemology · Just war theory · Keynesian economics · Pigou effect · Political science · Politics · Ridiculous · Spanish Civil War · State (computer science) · Classics · Defense, Military, and Policy Studies · History · Law · Philosophy

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