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In Pursuit of Leviathan: Technology, Institutions, Productivity, and Profits in American Whaling, 1816-1906. By Lance E. Davis, Robert E. Gallman, and Karin Gleiter. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. xii + 550 pages. Figures, photographs, tables, and index. Cloth, $80.00. ISBN 0-226-13789-9.
Reviewed by Robert C.H. Sweeny
In his 1950 essay, "American Civilization," C.L.R. James uses Melville's Moby Dick as a metaphor for the quintessential dilemma of modern America because it was nineteenth-century whaling that first revealed the contradiction between an individual's pursuit of happiness and the dictates of mass production. Captain Ahab's fulfillment came at the cost of his crew. Half a century later, a prestigious team of cliometricians from the National Bureau of Economic Research argues that nineteenth-century whaling proves the validity of general equilibrium theory. Both are bold, sweeping visions worthy of the view from a crow's nest, even if James proved the more accurate harpooner.
Since the authors of In Pursuit of the Leviathan are not maritime historians, a good portion of their book is devoted to an intelligent, and highly readable, summary of the large, albeit arcane, American literature on whaling. I found their narrative entertaining and instructive. It would undoubtedly have been enriched by the inclusion of at least some of the international literature: the absence of Eric Sager's quantitative study, Seafaring Labour (1989), is particularly perplexing. However, it would be unfair to criticize a national research team for so accurately reflecting their culture. So why did Lance E. Davis and Robert E. Gallman, initially working with Teresa Hutchins, choose whaling? They offer two reasons: the first, methodological and the second, theoretical.
American whaling grounds have been methodically worked by historians for more than a century. Karin Gleiter, who joined the team at a later date, drew...