The Market for Political Economy: the Advent of Economics in British University Culture, 1850-1905
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THE MARKET FOR POLITICAL ECONOMY THE MARKET FOR POLITICAL ECONOMY The advent of economics in British university culture, 1850–1905 Edited by Alon Kadish and Keith Tribe London and New York First published 1993 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge Inc. 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003. © 1993 Alon Kadish and Keith Tribe All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 0-203-40617-6 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-71441-5 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-03874-X (Print Edition) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Market for political economy: the advent of economics in British university culture, 1850–1905/ edited by Alon Kadish, Keith Tribe. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-415-03874-X 1. Economics—Study and teaching (Higher)—Great Britain— History. 2. Universities and colleges—Great Britain— Curricula—History. 3. Economics—Great Britain—History. I. Kadish, Alon, 1950– II. Tribe, Keith, 1949– HB74.9.G7M37 1993 330'.071'141–dc20 92–37258 CIP CONTENTS List of contributors vii Editorial preface: The institutionalization of political economy in Europe, the United States and Japan viii Gregory Claeys, Istvan Hont, Alon Radish and Keith Tribe Acknowledgements xii INTRODUCTION: THE SUPPLY OF AND DEMAND FOR ECONOMICS IN LATE VICTORIAN BRITAIN 1 1 THE TEACHING OF POLITICAL ECONOMY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LONDON 20 John Maloney 2 OXFORD ECONOMICS IN THE LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY 42 Alon Kadish 3 THE TEACHING OF POLITICAL ECONOMY IN THE EXTENSION MOVEMENT: CAMBRIDGE, LONDON AND OXFORD 78 Alon Kadish 4 THE TEACHING OF ECONOMICS AT THE QUEEN’S COLLEGES IN IRELAND (BELFAST, CORK, GALWAY), 1845–1900 111 Thomas A.Boylan and Timothy P.Foley 5 MARSHALL AND THE CAMBRIDGE ECONOMICS TRIPOS 137 Alon Kadish 6 JEVONS’S CONTRIBUTION TO THE TEACHING OF POLITICAL ECONOMY IN MANCHESTER AND LONDON 162 R.D.Collison Black v CONTENTS 7 POLITICAL ECONOMY IN THE NORTHERN CIVIC UNIVERSITIES 184 Keith Tribe 8 THE CITY, THE FABIANS AND THE FOUNDATION OF THE LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS 227 Alon Kadish Select Bibliography 251 Index 252 vi CONTRIBUTORS R.D.Collison Black is Emeritus Professor of Economics, Queen’s University, Belfast. Thomas A.Boylan is Professor of Economics, University College, Galway. Gregory Claeys is Professor of the History of Political Thought, Royal Holloway and Bedford College, University of London. Timothy P.Foley is Senior Lecturer in English Literature, University College, Galway. Istvan Hont is Lecturer in History, University of Cambridge. Alon Kadish is Senior Lecturer in History, Hebrew University, Jerusalem. John Maloney is Lecturer in Economics, University of Exeter. Keith Tribe is Senior Lecturer in Economics, Keele University. vii EDITORIAL PREFACE The institutionalization of political economy in Europe, the United States and Japan Gregory Claeys, Istvan Hont, Alon Kadish and Keith Tribe In July 1982 a meeting took place in the Research Centre, King’s College Cambridge at which it was decided to launch an international comparative project on the development and institutionalization of political economy. Its purpose was to examine the pre-eminence gained by political economy in the emergence and development of the social sciences in the course of the nineteenth century. Hitherto this problem had usually been approached using the methods and procedures of the history of ideas,1 whereas the new project was conceived from the outset as one which would move away from conventional intellectual history towards a social history of ideas. In place of the usual emphasis upon theoretical innovation and development, primacy was instead to be given to the process by which political economy became a discipline of study within the university context. By gaining a definite place within the university curriculum political economy was institutionalized: on the one hand, a body of knowledge was shaped by the pedagogic and administrative conditions of university education; while on the other, a new discipline of study was transmitted in this form to successive generations of students for whom certification in economics became an important vocational qualification. The King’s Research Centre was at this time engaged in a research project, under the direction of Istvan Hont, into ‘Political Economy and Society, 1750–1850’. This project had been initiated in 1978, and had 1 For Britain, an early important, but neglected, essay by Sidney Checkland is an exception to this—‘The advent of academic economics in England’ Manchester School, Vol.19, (1951), pp.43–70. More recently A.W.Coats has charted aspects of the later history of British and American economics in a number of essays, now brought together as A.W.Coats, The Sociology and Professionalisation of Economics. British and American Essays Vol. 2, Routledge, London 1993. viii EDITORIAL PREFACE already staged a major conference that had formed the basis for a successful volume on the Scottish Enlightenment.2 During the Spring of 1982 the Centre was approached by Piero Barucci, then Professor for the History of Economic Doctrines at the University of Florence, with a proposal for a joint project on the development of economics as a university discipline. This proposal originally envisaged the creation of an international database of departments, chairs, textbooks and personnel, but at the initial meeting in Cambridge in July 1982 the scope was immediately widened to a comparative historical treatment of the process of institutionalization. On this basis a ‘Call for papers’ was drafted,3 envisaging a programme of research, discussion and publication with a distinct structure and sequence. National research groups were to be established and made responsible for determining the parameters and chronologies of national histories.4 These groups were to gather information on the national development of economics as a university discipline, taking in a period stretching from the first established chair in the subject to that point in time when the subject could be said to constitute an autonomous discipline within the university system. Due account was to be given to the fact that the university system was itself undergoing a process of change, and this would necessitate the study of institutional contexts other than universities; but the focus was to be primarily the university. Following on from this initial phase of work, essays could then be written providing an overview of significant aspects of national developments in the institutionalization of political economy. A pre- conference meeting was planned for the following year at King’s College, where the initial results could be discussed and any deficiencies rectified before a concluding conference, to be held in Florence no earlier than the summer of 1984. The purpose of this concluding conference was to evaluate the national contributions within a cross-national comparative framework, providing a fresh insight into the development of the discipline of economics as an international phenomenon. As it turned out, the concluding conference was not in fact held until April 1986, at San Miniato; and the preparations for the final conference turned out to be of greater significance than the conference itself. This followed from several modifications to the initial programme, most significantly the addition of many European countries 2 I.Hont, M.Ignatieff (eds) Wealth and Virtue. The Shaping of Political Economy in the Scottish Enlightenment, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. 3 Signatories to this were Istvan Hont, Gregory Claeys and Biancamaria Fontana of the Research Centre; Keith Tribe of Keele University; and Piero Barucci and Gabriella Gioli of the University of Florence. 4 Originally the project covered only European and North American universities; Japan was included in late 1983. ix EDITORIAL PREFACE not initially included, and the staging of a number of workshops and national pre-conferences. The ‘Cambridge Pre-Conference’ meeting was held as planned in July 1983, and discussed progress in the establishment of working groups in Germany5 and the United States, together with preliminary results from the British and French groups. A one-day workshop was then held at the Sorbonne in July 1984,6 enabling the organizers to review the progress in recruiting contributors for Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy and Japan.7 At this meeting it was agreed that the final conference was to take place in 1986, preceded by a further preliminary conference in Paris in June 1985,8 and as many national workshops as possible. These were considered important as ‘opinion-forming’ events preliminary to the final conference, at which the framework of a national summary paper could be established through discussion among individual contributors. The British group had a successful meeting at Keele in March 1985, and it was here that an overall interpretation of political economy in English, Scottish and Irish universities emerged.