An Epistemological Analysis of the Economic Writings of Sir Dudley North

University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 6-1986 An Epistemological Analysis of the Economic Writings of Sir Dudley North George Dorian Choksy University of Tennessee - Knoxville Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss Part of the Economics Commons Recommended Citation Choksy, George Dorian, "An Epistemological Analysis of the Economic Writings of Sir Dudley North. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 1986. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/2987 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by George Dorian Choksy entitled "An Epistemological Analysis of the Economic Writings of Sir Dudley North." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in Economics. Hans E. Jensen, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: W. E. Cole, David A. Etnier Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by George Dorian Choksy entitled "An Epistemological Analysis of the Economic Writings of Sir Dudley North." I have examined the final copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in Economics. Hans E. Jensen, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Accepted for the Council: ViCePiOVOst and Dean of The Graduate School AN EPISTEMOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF THE ECONOMIC WRITINGS OF SIR DUDLEY NORTH A Dissertation Presented for the Doctor of Ph i losophy Degree The University of Tennessee , Knoxville George Dorian Choksy June 1986 Copyright @ George Dorian Cho�, 1986 All rights reserved iii to Nanny , Granny , Lois, Joyce1 Robin, and Deidre historical continuity iv ABSTRACT The existing secondary literature on the life and writings of Sir Dudley North is scant and incomplete, and contains su bs tantial factual errors. In this dissertation, North�s complete econom ic princ iples are reconstructed from primary sources; North invented a pr ice mechanics of markets, a specie-f low mechanics , and a national income mechanics . The epistemological dev ice of the conceptuali zed reality is used to analyze the sources of North� s economic princ iples; his economics is decomposed into its constituent parts of histor ical and empirical fact matrix, and hypo thetical and theoretical bel ief system . North� s failure to establish a par adigm is explained, in terms of disjuncture with prevailing debate , and in terms of political cons iderations. v PIU�FACE My re search into the life, times , and ideas of Sir Dudley North had inauspicious beginnings , in the form of a term-paper project during my first year in graduate school . William Letwin's excellent work on the writings of Sir Dudley pe aked my curiosity enough that I ordered several ve ry old books by Roger North through the interlibr ary loan. These arr ived too late to be incorpo rated into the paper , and yet the ir antiquity del ighted me so muc h that I studied them closely , out of pure idle curiosity. From that time onward, Si r Dudley North became my constant companion--my 'hobby ,' if you will--and, as with most ho bbies, thi s one tended to expand with the passage of time. I found myself 'needi ng' to read in the fields of English and Ottoman hi story, epistemology , Islamic religion , the history of money , mercantilist literature, and other fields , just to 'feed my hobby .' After five years of thi s, I suddenly realized that I had the makings of a dissertation topic on my hands , even though this had never be en my original intention. This revelation carne as qu ite a surpr ise to me , since much of my formal graduate education had been directed towards a Ph.D-field in econome tric s . vi I cannot explain why Sir Dudley North has been so neglected by historians of economics--but I can right the wrong, and this dissertation constitutes only the first installment in that process. I wish to thank my mentor , Hans E. Jensen, for his continuing encouragement and guidance over the past twelve years of th is endeavor. Any errors that remain are exclusively my own. I also wish to express sincere appreciation to my alma mate�, The Un iversity of Tennessee at Knoxville , for giving me the l�titude--and the time--to �ch ange majors� in mid-stream. Without such latitude and discretion , this research might never have seen the light of day. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. TOP ICS AND ME THOD ••. 1 II. THE ECONOMIC PRINCIPLES OF SIR DUDLEY NORTH 14 III . FOUNDATIONS FOR SIR DUDLEY� S • 64 FORMAL ANALYS IS . IV. SIR DUDLEY'S CONCEPTUALIZED REALITY: FACTS , PROCESSES, STRUCT URE 97 v. SIR DUDLEY� S ANALYS IS • • • • 124 VI . FAILURE TO ES'1'ABLISH A PARADIGM • 131 VII. SUMMARY , CONCLUSIONS , AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTRER RESEARCH • • • • 159 162 BIBLIOGRAPHY • • • • • • • • . • . VITA 170 1 CHAPTER I TOPICS AND METHOD There is a pa uc ity of economic literature concerning the writings of Sir Dudley Nor th. A pe rusal of contemporary works in the history of economics ma kes it evident that there is no uniform treatment of Sir Dudley�s place in the development of economic ideologies. For example, in his History of Economic Analysis, Joseph Schumpeter made the following observation: "North in particular did nothing but sum up , incompletely but effectively , the contribution of the "'mercantilist"' 1 writings to 1691. " Schumpe ter bel ieved that the econom ic content of No r th�s analys is was "so pr imitive that there 2 is no po int in insisting on it.n More recent wor ks in the history of economics have taken a different approach in the character i zation of Sir Dudley North and Discour ses 3 Upon Trade. Jacob Oser and William Blanchfield , for example , del ineate an immediate pr eclassical period of economic thought , characte r ized by the writings of 1 Jos7ph A� Schumpeter , Historl of Econom ic Analys is, Ox ford Un1vers1ty Press, Inc. , New Yor k, 195 4; p. 369. 2 schumpeter , Historx of Economic A�alysis, p. 370. 3 sir Dudley North , Discourses UJ20� Trade , _1691, ed ited by Jacob H. Ho llinder, The Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, Maryland , [1691] 190 7. 2 Cantillon, Hume , and North , in which the writers are groping toward a sc ientific economics with only partial 4 success. From this vantage, the economics of Sir Ducley Nor th is seen to be more analytical ly acute than that of the mercantilist school of thought, but within the conceptual bounds of the prescientific stage of the development economics. From either per spective, there is no unique importance attached to North�s wr itings. Discourses ppon Trade had no discernable effect on economic thinking at the time of its publication, and although Adam Smith had 5 heard of the tract, he never saw it. James Mill, John McCulloch , and David Ricardo were the first of the classical economists to br ing Discourses Upon Trade into the awareness of the writers of the classical per iod in economics, but the tract was then viewed as a delightfully curious pr emonition of classical notions , and no special significance was attached to it. The mo st substantive contri bution to the literature concerning Sir Dudley North consists of two chapters in ____,. ___ _ 4 Jacob Oser and William C. Blanchfi eld, The Evolution of Ec<;>nomic !hought, Third Edition, Harcourt Brace Jovanov1ch, Inc. , New York , 1975; pp . 42-58. 5 william Letwin, 9r ig ins �f Sc ie:ntif i_q Economic s, Doubleday & Company , Inc., New York, 1964 ; p. 274. 3 Will iam Letwin"'s Origins of Scientif}c Economics. L�twin dr ew upon the wr itings of Dudley North and Roger Nor th , Dudley� s younger brother, and produced a biographical sketch of Sir Dudley North , and showed that North � s economics was superior to that of his mer cantilist contemporar ies in terms of analytical cons istency . Of North� s economics, Letwin says, North � s is the fir st . full equilibr ium analysis in the history of economic theory; o� , more exactly, North was the first econom1c writer to construct a cogent analysis, founded on a few, broad , general principles of axiomatic simpl icity, which enable him to provide a mechanistic explanation of an economic process, and to reach policy conclusions that are deducible strictly from the premises. Meager and excessively terse as the Discourses seem, they contain a theoretical structure of power unequalled in their time, the peak of economic 6 thought during the seventeenth century . Letwin also showed that the preface to Dudley North� s Discourses upon Trade was probably wr itten by Roger. North. Letwin� s analysis of the original handwr itten manuscripts of the preface and text of pis�s !:!_Eon Trade led him to formulate the followi ng hypothesis about the authorship of the tract: The hypothesis is that Dudley dictated a draft of the two discourses and the postscript to Roger , that Roger then took it away fo r editing , returning with certain queries about the second discourse , which he discussed with Sir Dudley.

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