(Berkeley, CA) Henry Gemery, Department of Economics, Colby College received the 1996 Jonathan Hughes Prize for Excellence in Teaching Economic History at the Economic History Association banquet September 7. Gemery is the third recipient of the Hughes Prize, which was established in memory of Jonathan Hughes, a committed and influential teacher of economic history. The Selection Committee for 1995-96 consisted of David Mitch, Chair, Hugh Rockoff (Rutgers) and Sally Clarke (Texas-Austin).

The award presentation noted the high standards Professor Gemery has set for undergraduate teaching, including his insistence on the importance both of good theoretical/conceptual foundations and of solid grounding in primary sources for work in economic history. This emphasis on fundamental standards of the discipline has had a lasting impact on a number of his students who have gone on to other institutions to write doctoral dissertations in economic history. Professor Gemery's teaching and his career more generally are noteworthy for the combination of genuine interest in the scholarship of other economic historians, genuine interest in his students, and continuing contribution to scholarship in the field throughout a long career devoted to undergraduate education. He is known to students and colleagues alike for his modesty and graciousness.

As recipient of the award, Professor Gemery was invited to provide his observations on teaching economic history. In his cover letter, he said, "My undergraduate days in a teachers' college - where I was forced to take education courses - left me with a lifelong (thus far) aversion to saying anything about pedagogy. So I found these comments difficult to write." We should therefore be particularly grateful to Professor Gemery for his remarks, reproduced below. [Gemery wrote these observations while on leave in London; hence the British spelling.]

In commenting on the teaching of economic history, a preface on context is necessary. My good fortune has been to teach small classes, rarely numbering over 30, where a seminar or quasi-seminar atmosphere can be maintained. Though such class sizes are not unusual at the graduate level, these classes are undergraduate, where the students' only common denominator is a two-semester principles course, micro and macro. Some students invariably have had a greater theory exposure, e.g., international trade or finance or econometrics, and the small class size means that I can ask that they use that background in presenting in-class reports on journal articles and in their writing of required papers. Within this small scale context, at least two advantages offered by the field can be exploited.

One advantage in teaching economic history over, say, social history or political history, is that students possess a familiarity with theory - economic theory that provides a framework for analysis, for hypothesizing answers to the manifold "why" question of economic growth and change. Why the appearance (and disappearance) of indentured labour? Why the development of slave labour? Why the productivity gains in ocean shipping, in textiles, but few in iron production? Why inflation? Or, more puzzling, why deflation in a period of rapid economic growth? Why the Depression of the 1930's? Or looking more broadly, why the "Long Depression" of the 1920's and 30's? Questions like these continually confront students with two necessities: to bring relevant economic theory to bear, and to examine or search out the data required for testing any given theory. Fortunately, the economic history literature is replete with analyses that bring theory and data together. It is this "analytical storyline" that most intrigues - and challenges - students. Fortunately too, there is debate in the literature so a critical assessment of how authors have employed theory and data is a further challenge to students. While analysis and critical review are more demanding of students, emphasis on the "analytical storyline" saves them from what they can too easily regard as merely a data-laden stream of asserted facts.

Students' prior exposure to economic theory brings another advantage to the teaching of economic history. They generally have no quibbles with the behavioural assumptions of utility maximization and profit maximization. So behaviour within the behavioural parameters of price, income, and tastes or alternatively, cost, technological capability, and revenue is neither a surprise or an oddity. Analysing the "why" questions, then, does not have a remoteness since they can easily visualize themselves as micro participants (beneficiaries? victims?) within the parameters presented by markets, institutions, and government actions. The incentives and welfare outcomes of economic circumstances and change can be readily appreciated.

Douglass C. North, the first Hughes Prize winner, has already noted in his comments that the challenge and reward of teaching economic history lies in teaching students to think for themselves. To that end, the analytical, more than the descriptive narrative, is what counts. We begin with a couple of advantages deriving from an acquaintance with economic theory, but the challenge of analysis remains, for us and for students.