English historical school of economics
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The English Historical School of Economics, although not nearly as famous as its German counterpart, sought a return to inductive methods in economics. Indeed, from the very start, empiricists opposition to abstract economic constructions Classical Political economists, such as: David Ricardo and John Stuart Mill was mustered throughout Britain - culminating, then, in the "English Historical School" (EHS). As the school revered the inductive process, the members invariably called for the merging of historical fact with those of the present period.
Background
The school considered itself the intellectual heirs of past figures who had emphasized empiricism and induction, such as Francis Bacon, Adam Smith, Auguste Comte, and Herbert Spencer (Cliffe Leslie 1870, Rogers 1880).
Strictly speaking, and despite the English label, the group’s two most notable representatives, John Kells Ingram and Thomas Edward Cliffe Leslie, were not English but Irish. This led some economic historians, such as Koot (1975: 312-313), to an argument that English historical economics was not only developed by Irish economists, but that it was a direct response to Irish economic conditions, for the gap between economic theory and reality was particular evident in Ireland.
The argument apart, Ingram and Leslie and, for the record, Scott William Cunningham, all considered themselves English. All three were talking of being the English members of the EHS group of socio-economic and historical thinkers. The English tenor comes above even more strongly as a search of six of Leslie’s main articles ( as well as Ingram’s ) shows that he never uses the word British. Leslie clearly identifies himself, and other Irish and Scottish economists, as English (Backhouse 2001).
Professional background is even more interesting. Jones, Rogers and Whewell started either as full-fledged reverends or ( Whewell) almost became one. Ingram was not an economist at all; he was professor of Greek at Dublin. However, all of them were, first of all, noted historians while three of them (Whewell, Jones, and Rogers) were accomplished statisticians and/or mathematical economists (Reiner 2004).
Members
There have been many member-groupings of EHS in the literature over the decades. The following “membership” is probably the one most historians of economic thought would agree with:
Richard Jones
Richard Jones, 1790-1855. His major work is An Essay on the Distribution of Wealth and on the Sources of Taxation (1831). Anglican clergyman and Malthus's successor at Haileybury, Jones attacked the Ricardians for their theory of rent, their wages fund doctrine, their lack of empirical content and pretensions to "scientific" universalism. He was highly influential on William Whewell.
William Whewell
William Whewell, 1794-1866. One of the leading figures of nineteenth-century science. Whewell's wide range of activities and expertise make him particularly difficult to label. He wrote authoritatively on architecture, mechanics, mineralogy, moral philosophy, astronomy, political economy, and the philosophy of science. He was very often called a polymath. One of his contemporiaries poked fun at Whewell, remarking: "science is his forte, omniscience is his foible."
John Kells Ingram
John Kells Ingram, 1823-1907. His major work is History of Political Economy, 1888. He was not a trained economist per se but rather a sociologist and follower of French sociologist Auguste Comte. Ingram, very much influenced by the German Historical School and, as such, opponent of materialism, ideology, abstractionism and scientism of Classical theory, was a professor of Greek at Dublin.
James Edwin Thorold Rogers
James Edwin Thorold Rogers, 1823-1890. He was educated at King's College, London, and Magdalen Hall, Oxford. After taking a first-class degree in 1846, he was ordained, and was for a few years a curate in Oxford. Simultaneously with these occupations he had been diligently studying economics, with the result that in 1859 he was appointed professor of statistics and economic science at King's College, London, a post which he filled till his death. His major work is History of Agriculture and Prices in England, dealing with the period 1259-1400, a minute and masterly record of the subject, and the work upon which his reputation mainly rests.
Thomas E. Cliffe Leslie
- Thomas E. Cliffe Leslie, 1825-1882. It was Leslie who,in 1870,posed the most radical challenge to the Ricardian orthodoxy in political economy represented by in their day by John Elliot Cairnes 1823-1875), another Irish economist, and Henry Fawcett, of Cambridge, and before that by John Stuart Mill and David Ricardo. Leslie was considered to be the man who had provided
“..the first systematic statement by an English writer of the philosophic foundation of the historical method…”( Ingram 1967.)
Walter Bagehot
Walter Bagehot, 1826-1877. Bagehot was an English economist, social theorist, and literary critic and, also, virtually the founder in England of political psychology and political sociology. He was absorbed with the problem of national character and saw the convergence between culture, social structure, and personality structure. In 1857, he met James Wilson, founder and editor of the Economist, a political, literary, and financial weekly. Bagehot married Wilson's daughter, and when Wilson died suddenly, Bagehot became managing director and then editor, a post he held until his death.
William Cunningham
- William Cunningham, 1849-1919. English economic historian and educator, Cunningham was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, where he was educated at Edinburgh Academy and Edinburgh University. His major work Growth of English Industry and Commerce (1882) is the one that has shown permanent value. It went through seven editions by 1910 and was long the standard work on the subject. The work provided useful information about the Middle Ages (5th century to 15th century) and the 16th century. Apart from and, possibly, because of it, Cunningham is given credit as a pioneer in producing an organized survey of English economic history.
Arnold Toynbee
Arnold Toynbee, 1852-1883. His major work is Lectures on the Industrial Revolution in England, 1884. Considered famous, yet controversial, historian, Toynbee was the first to historically identify and name the British "Industrial Revolution." His analysis of monopolies and oligopolies was prescient. He was a thorough historicist and adhered to the inductive method. A social activist and humanitarian, he was also an opponent of laissez-faire economic policy.
William J. Ashley
William J. Ashley, 1860-1927. Known for his tireless building of the Commerce department at the Birmingham University to become one of the best in England. During the years 1900-1906, Ashley wielded some political influence on the Conservative government's economic policy, notably arguing against Joseph Chamberlain's plans for tariff reform. His 1903 work, The Tariff Problem detailed his arguments against the compulsory imposition of heavy tariffs against the importing of any goods produced outside of Britain and her empire. He attacked the universalism and abstractionism of Classical and Neoclassical theory. An opponent of laissez-faire, he was also a proponent of imperialism. Ashley is, perhaps, the English thinker closest to the German Historicists.
Concepts
Inductive method
The economists of the English historical school were in general agreement on several ideas. They pursued an inductive approach to economics rather than the deductive approach taken by classical and neo-classical theorists. They recognized the need for careful statistical research. They rejected the hypothesis of "the profit maximizing individual" or the "calculus of pleasure and pain" as the only basis for economic analysis and policy. They believed that it was more reasonable to base analysis on the collective whole of altruistic individuals (Goldman 1989: 223-225).
Typical in this endeavour was Richard Jones, regarded by many as the father of the English historical school of economics. Jones's method is inductive; his conclusions are founded on a wide observation of contemporary facts, aided by the study of history. The world he professed to study was not an imaginary world, inhabited by abstract "economic men," but the real world with the different forms which the ownership and cultivation of land, and, in general, the conditions of production and distribution, assume at different times and places (Reinert 2004).
His recognition of such different systems of life in communities occupying different stages in the progress of civilization led to his proposal of what he called a "political economy of nations."
This was his protest against the deductive methodology in social economics: the practice of taking the exceptional state of facts which exists, and is indeed only partially realized, in a small corner of our planet as representing the uniform type of human societies, and ignoring the effects of the early history and special development of each community as influencing its economic phenomena (Reinert 2004).
In addition to his influential pronouncements on the proper way to do science, Whewell, in his Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences (1840), also attempted to classify the sciences:
[T]he essence of induction was "the colligation of facts by means of a concept." In other words a wide range of facts should be brought together to support a conclusion. A theory could be considered confirmed if many independent inductions from experience are unified and fit together within the theory. (Whewell 1840).
Alfred Marshall acknowledged the force of the Historical School's views in his 1890 Synthesis:
[T]he explanation of the past and the prediction of the future are not different operations, but the same worked in opposite directions, the one from effect to cause, the other from cause to effect. As Schmoller well says, to obtain "a knowledge of individual causes" we need "induction; the final conclusion of which is indeed nothing but the inversion of the syllogism which is employed in deduction.... Induction and deduction rest on the same tendencies, the same beliefs, the same needs of our reason. (Marshall 1890).
No universal economic laws
Historical economists of the nineteenth century also rejected the view that economic policy prescriptions, however derived, would apply universally, without regard to place or time, as followers of the Ricardian and Marshallian schools did.
Robert Lowe, one of Leslie’s main opponents, had claimed that: “……Political economy belongs to no nation; it is of no country…” ( Leslie 1879 [1870]: 148).
In contrast, Leslie maintained that:
Political economy is not a body of natural laws in the true sense, or of universal andimmutable truths, but an assemblage of speculations and doctrines which are the result of a particular history, coloured even by the history and character of its chief writers; that ... it has varied much in different ages and countries; ... that, in fact, its expositors, since the time of Adam Smith, are substantially divisible into two schools, following opposite methods. ... No branch of philosophical doctrine, indeed, can be fairly investigated or apprehended apart from its history. (Leslie 1879[1870]: 148-9).
This was the essential case for the historical method.
The conclusion has been drawn from this that historical economics is, according to, the then, established, criterion, English. And it was Leslie, who applied these to economics. Ingram recognized this when in his History he wrote that:
[I]t was Leslie who had provided ‘the first systematic statement by an English writer of the philosophic foundation of the historical method, as the appropriate organ of economic research’, referring to the ‘freshness and originality’ of his treatment. (Ingram 1967 [1888]: 222).
Quantitative methods in research
We start with the terms of deduction and induction as the EHS was known to refute method of deduction in social sciences. The prime reason why the deductive method, derived from Ricardo and being followed by Fawcett and Cairnes, was not applicable, stemmed from the need to derive a political economy from the circumstances of each country ( Leslie 1879: 411. )
- Deductive methodology: A mathematics dictionary states that: “…A model ( say: a country ) for a deductive theory is a set of objects that have the properties stated ( in a priori claimed ) axioms. The deductive theory is then used to prove theorems that are true for all its models ( i.e. for all countries) at one time..." ( James & James 1968.)
- Inductive methods: On the other hand "...the mathematical induction is a method that proves a law or a theorem by showing that it holds in the first case and if it also holds for all the preceding cases, it also hold for this case...." ( ibid. )
From these short definitions, it is immediately clear, why the historians of the English Historical School, who were also steeped in statistical time series of facts, embraced the inductive method.
Richard Jones --- as all members of the School was very keen in studying and analyzing of statistical data from the past, and along with Charles Babbage,Adolphe Quetelet, William Whewell and Thomas Malthus --- was instrumental in founding the London Statistical Society (later "The Royal Statistical Society").
William Whewell, another member of the School, a member of the Royal Society and a man of whom John Herschel wrote, “a more wonderful variety and amount of knowledge in almost every department of human inquiry was perhaps never in the same interval of time accumulated by any man”( Stephen 1900 ) , pioneered the graphical representation of data and its use in theoretical investigations. He used his unique “graphical method of curves” throughout his tidal studies, and, in turn, used his tidal researches as an explanation of the process of data reduction and analysis in his Philosophy( Whewell 1840.)
In a number of articles, James Henderson (1973 ) has argued that".... Whewell's 1850 "Memoir" used a mathematical statement of a "demand elasticity coefficient as a device to Identify Giffen goods ... forty-five years before Alfred Marshall....." Noting the difficulty in locating evidence in Giffen's work from which Marshall could have derived his "hint," Henderson suggests Whewell as a possible source. Although Marshall did not refer to Whewell's work, "it is hard to believe" that he was "unaware" of it, so there is "a possible link between Whewell and Marshall with respect to the Giffen paradox" (Henderson 1973: 329, 339).
And, finally, Thorold Rogers, was, in 1859, appointed professor of statistics and economic science at King's College, London, a post which he filled till his death.
Lasting influence of EHS
As the nineteenth century progressed, classical liberalism increased in influence. Although in Britain it never quite dominated academia, it was particularly influential through the medium of famous journals and newspapers such as Walter Bagehot's The Economist.
In the 1870s and 1880s, the prevailing Ricardian, or ‘classical’, orthodoxy was challenged by
What has come to be known as the “English” historical school (Koot 1975.)
Although the critics claim that English historical economics was too diffuse, too lacking in strong leadership, too untheoretical, and too committed to economic history as a discipline to create such a “school,” there are some very positive achievements of the EHS.
The special contribution of the EHS in the pre-war period was certainly not in theory, since one of the chief reasons for it being an alternative to Marshall's school of orthodoxy was that it paid relatively little attention to economic theory during this period. Rather, its alternative economics offered central conception: The economist's raison d'etre was to solve pressing contemporary problems for which orthodox theory seemed to offer little guidance. Thus its members proposed curriculum that emphasized applied subjects and economic history (ibid.)
In the process the EHS introduced quantitative methodology, such as: statistics, graphical plots, and, as in case of William Whewell, some very pioneering methods of mathematical economics. That they were dwelling on inductive method of mathematical logic was not only proper at the time, as they were historicists of most scientific areas at he time, but perhaps their most important legacy to the future generations of economists and sociologists.
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
- Ashley, William J. (1897), "The Tory Origin of Free Trade Policy." Quarterly Journal of Economics, McMaster. Retrieved December 16, 2007.
- Ashton, T. S.,(1948), The Industrial Revolution, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
- Backhouse, R. E., (2001), "Introduction." In: The English Historical School of Economics, ed. R. E. Backhouse and P. J. Cain, ix-xxiv. Vol. 1. Bristol: Thoemmes Press.
- Cliffe Leslie, T. E., (1870), "The Political Economy of Adam Smith." Fortnightly Review, Retrieved December 16, 2007.
- Goldman, Lawrence, ( 1989), "Entrepreneurs in Business History," The Business History Review, Vol. 63, No. 1, 223-225.
- Henderson, J.P., (1973), "William Whewell's Mathematical Statements of Price Flexibility, Demand Elasticity and the Giffen Paradox," The Manchester School, 41(3): 329-42.
- Hodgson,Geoffrey Martin, (2001), "Alfred Marshall and the British ‘Methodendiskurs’ , in: How Economics Forgot History: The Problem of Historical Specificity in the Social Sciences, pp. 95-112, Routledge, ISBN 0415257166
- Ingram, J.K., (1888), A History of Political Economy ; reprints of Economic Classics, Kelly, 1967. (hardcover)
- James&James, (1968), Mathematics Dictionary, Princeton : D. van Nostrand Co. Inc.
- Koot, G. M. ( 1975), “T. E. Cliffe Leslie, Irish social reform and the origins of the English historical school of economics,” History of Political Economy 7 (3):312-36.
- Leslie, T. E. C. (1879), Essays in Political and Moral Philosophy, Dublin: Hodges, Foster and Figgis.
- Leslie, T.E.C. (1870), “The political economy of Adam Smith,” Fortnightly Review, reprinted in Leslie 1879: 148-66.
- Leslie, T.E.C. (1876), “On the philosophical method of political economy,” Hermathena IV, reprinted in Leslie 1879: 216-42.
- Marshall, Alfred (1890) “The scope and method of economics.” Principles of Economics, Macmillan. Retrieved December 16, 2007.
- Spiegel, Henry William, (1991), The Growth of Economic Thought, Durham & London: Duke University Press. ISBN 0822309734
- Reinert, Erik S. (2004) (ed.), Globalization, Economic Development and Inequality: An Alternative Perspective , Cheltenham: Edward Elgar; series: New Horizons in Institutional and Evolutionary Economics
- Rogers, Thorold. 1880. "Editor's Preface." An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols. Retrieved December 16, 2007.
- Stephen, L., (1900), The English Utilitarians, London: Duckworth and C.
- Whewell, W., (1840), The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, founded upon their History, 2 vols. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, & Co.
- Tribe, Keith. 2002. Historical Schools of Economics: German and English Keele Economics Research Papers KERP No. 2002/02. Retrieved November 3, 2008.
External links
- English Historical School Retrieved December 16, 2007.
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