Professor of the History and Philosophy of Economics at the University of Birmingham, Backhouse is a leading historian of economics.

Part 1 The ancient world: Homer and Hesiod; estate management - Xenophon's "Oikonomikos"; Plato's ideal state; Aristotle on justice and exchange; Aristotle and the acquisition of wealth; Rome; conclusions. Part 2 The Middle Ages: the decline of Rome; Judaism; early Christianity; Islam; from Charles Martel to the Black Death; the 12th-century Renaissance and economics in the universities; Nicole Oresme and the theory of money; conclusions. Part 3 The emergence of the modern world view - the 16th century: the Renaissance and the emergence of modern science; the Reformation; the rise of the European nation state; mercantilism; Machiavelli; the school of Salamanca and American treasure; England under the Tudors; economics in the 16th century. Part 4 Science, politics and trade in 17th-century England: background; science and the scientists of the Royal Society; political ferment; economic problems -Dutch commercial power and the crisis of the 1620s; the balance-of-trade doctrine; the rate of interest and the case for free trade; the recoinage crisis of the 1690s; economics in 17th-century England. Part 5 Absolutism and Enlightenment in 18th-century France: problems of the absolute state; early-18th-century critics of mercantilism; Cantillon on the nature of commerce in general; the Enlightenment; physiocracy; Turgot; economic thought under the "ancien regime". Part 6 The Scottish Enlightenment of the 18th century: background; Hutcheson; Hume; Sir James Steuart; Adam Smith; division of labour and the market; capital accumulation; Smith and laissez-faire; economic thought at the end of the 18th century. Part 7 Classical political economy, 1790-1870: from moral philosophy to political economy; utilitarianism and the philosophical radicals; Ricardian economics; alternatives to Ricardian economics; government policy and the role of the state; money; John Stuart Mill; Karl Marx; conclusions. Part 8 The split between history and theory in Europe, 1870-1914: the professionalization of economics; Jevons, Walras and mathematical economics; economics in Germany and Austria; historical economics and the Marshallian School in Britain; European economic theory, 1900-1914. Part 9 The rise of American economics, 1870-1939: US economics in the late 19th century; John Bates Clark; mathematical economics; Thorstein Veblen; John R. Commons; inter-war pluralism; inter-war studies of competition; the migration of European academics; US economics in the mid-20th century. Part 10 Money and the business cycle, 1898-1939: Wicksell's cumulative process; the changed economic environment; Austrian and Swedish theories of the business cycle; Britain - from Marshall to Keynes; the American tradition; Keynes's "general theory"; the Keynsian revolution; the transition from inter-war to post-Second World War macroeconomics. Part 11 Econometrics and mathematical economics, 1930 to the present: the mathematization of economics. (Part Contents).