David Landes

29 August 2013 at 11:30 am Dick Langlois Leave a comment

| Dick Langlois |

As some readers may already have heard, David Landes passed away on August 17. The New York Times has not seen fit to publish an obituary, but here is one by Landes’s son Richard.

I only met Landes once, at the International Economic History Association meeting in Milan in 1994. I attended a session he chaired on the Industrial Revolution. Rondo Cameron, a real character, sat himself down in the front row near the podium. Cameron was one of the most vocal proponents of the idea that there was actually no such thing as the Industrial Revolution, based largely on the argument that income per capita did not rise dramatically during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century (even though both the numerator and denominator were rising dramatically). Landes opened the session, and some hapless economic historian began presenting a paper on something or other during the Industrial Revolution. Cameron immediately put up his hand and announced that the presenter’s premise was mistaken – because there had been no Industrial Revolution! Landes then sprang back to the podium and delivered a wonderful extemporaneous speech on why it was indeed appropriate to talk about an Industrial Revolution, including an analysis of the word “revolution” and its first use in French. This session also sticks in memory because half-way through an audience member suffered and epileptic fit and had to be carted out to an ambulance.

I must say that, in the great debates in which Landes engaged, I most often found myself coming down on his side.