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[1] Economic History at Glasgow Before 1957

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[1] Economic History at Glasgow Before 1957 [1] Economic History at Glasgow before 1957 The origins of Economic History as a distinct discipline lie in the nineteenth century. Dissatisfaction with the traditional concerns of historians with constitutional, political and ecclesiastical history led the Oxford historian, James E. Thorold Rogers, to write his monumental History of Agriculture and Prices in England (seven volumes, 1866-1902). Rogers occupied the Drummond Chair of Political Economy, outside the History School, although economic history topics were covered in the examinations in both Political Economy and History. At Cambridge, economic history appeared in the Political Economy and History Triposes. Other universities and colleges offered Economic History in the early twentieth century. At Glasgow, short courses were offered on ‘social and economic The young R. H. Tawney. history’ under the auspices of the School of Social Study and Source: University of Utah. Training, which had been established in 1909. Modern history itself first appeared in the national institutions.’ An ambitious syllabus – focusing on Glasgow curriculum only in the late nineteenth British history – covered manorial England, the Black Death, century. A Professor of Modern History (Richard imperialism and the agricultural and industrial revolutions. The Lodge) was first appointed in 1894, and a set books were George Townsend Warner, Landmarks in English Professor of Scottish History and Literature Industrial History (1899) and Hugh Owen Meredith, Outlines of (Robert Sangster Rait) followed in 1913. The the Economic History of England (1908). first economic historian at the University was probably R. H. Tawney. Born in 1880 and educated at Rugby After Richards’s short tenure of the lectureship, Donald Stalker School and Balliol College Oxford, Tawney spent three years was appointed, and after a short vacancy at the end of the First at Toynbee Hall in the East End of London, and then two years World War, two women held the post: Theodora Keith (1919-21) from 1906 to 1908 as an Assistant Lecturer in Political Economy and N. M. Scott (1921-3). Keith, the first woman to hold a full-time at the University of Glasgow. While at the University, Tawney lecturing post at the University, was the author of Commercial also wrote for the Glasgow Herald, and carried out a study of Relations of England and Scotland 1603-1707 (1910), and two juvenile labour in the city. He left to take up a post with the articles in the English Historical Review on the trading privileges Workers’ Educational Association and the University of Oxford. of Scottish burghs. Under Scott, a Cambridge Economics His first book, The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century, graduate, two Honours courses were taught: ‘Scottish Economic was published in 1912, but Tawney was best known for Religion History to 1760’ and ‘English Economic History to 1860’. C. and the Rise of Capitalism (1926). In 1932 Tawney claimed that F. Smith, Lecturer from 1923 to 1930, taught much the same history ‘is concerned with the study, not of a series of past events, syllabus, until he was replaced by John A. Buyers. Buyers but of the life of society, and with records of the past as a means remained at Glasgow, joining the Department of Economic to that end’. It is not clear what Tawney’s teaching at Glasgow History when it was founded in 1957. In actually involved, although he recalled that his time spent at 1938-9 students were still required to read the University put him off economic theory for life. Townsend Warner’s Landmarks in English Industrial History, but by the 1950s G. M. The first Lecturer in Economic History was Trevelyan’s English Social History was a key item of reading. Robert Richards, who is first listed in the View from the University tower, 1904, showing University Gardens in the foreground. Lilybank University Calendar for 1910-11. For the House is behind University Gardens. Photograph courtesy of University of Glasgow ImageBase. next 47 years, Economic History was taught Theodora Keith, article in the English Historical Review in 1913. as part of the Political Economy curriculum. Source: JSTOR. Richards’s syllabus emphasised the ‘interdependence of historical facts [and Credits the] Importance of the subtle but constant Text by Rosemary Elliot and Mark Freeman. We are grateful to Laura Brouard, Forbes Munro, Scott pressure exerted by Economic forces upon O’Donnell, Neil Rollings and Tony Slaven for their assistance with the preparation of this display. [2] Establishment of the Chair in Economic History After the Second World War, science, engineering and medicine at Glasgow had been ‘revitalised’, but there was ‘uncertainty’ in the Faculty of Arts, which was the largest Faculty in terms of student numbers. Funding was a problem for traditional Arts disciplines, at Glasgow and elsewhere, and in the climate of the early post- war years the social sciences looked more promising. From 1944 to 1946 the economic historian Sir John Clapham – author of economic history textbooks and the history of the Bank of England – chaired a government committee, which presented a dim view of social science in British universities, recommending increased funding. As a result, the University Grants Committee set aside £1.2 million for the Sydney Checkland, Professor of Economic History, 1957-1982. development of the social sciences in the period 1947-52. Source: Glasgow University Archives, PH/PR/2667. At Glasgow, the social sciences were helped by a grant from well as developing a ‘balanced’ programme of teaching in the the Rockefeller Foundation in 1945: this was used to establish discipline. Checkland was the author of a number of key texts in a Department of Social and Economic Research in 1946. This Scottish, English and international economic history, including Department undertook social surveys of Scotland, and had The Rise of Industrial Society in England (1964), The Mines of a sub-Department for the study of the Soviet Union. It was Tharsis: Roman, French and British Enterprise in Spain (1967) part of the Faculty of Arts, where all the social sciences were and Scottish Banking: A History based until the 1970s. The Faculty admitted 466 students in (1975). He also wrote a ‘family the session 1956-7. History was strong in the Faculty, which biography’ of the Gladstones, had a Department of History and Law as well as Scottish History published in 1971. Checkland and Literature. By the early 1950s, the Faculty was considering died in 1986. how to develop its history teaching, and appointed a committee The Times, 6 October 1956, reports the appoint- ment of Sydney Checkland to the new Chair. to discuss the question in January 1954. On 26 October 1954, Source: The Times digital archive. having considered the appointment of a professor in ‘very modern history’, the Faculty minuted its preference for a chair in Economic History. There was already a Alec Cairncross, Professor of Applied Lecturer in Economic History, the long-serving Economics and later Chancellor of the University of Glasgow. John A. Buyers, based in the Department Source: World Bank photo gallery. of Political Economy. Moreover, a leading economic historian, Alec Cairncross, later Chancellor of the University, had taken up a chair in Applied Economics in 1949. An ordinance establishing a chair in Economic History at Glasgow was approved on 1 December 1955, and applications for the chair were invited. On 6 October 1956 The Times reported the appointment of Sydney Checkland. Checkland was a Canadian, a graduate of the University of Birmingham and former president of the National Union of Students. He had spent seven years as a Lecturer in Economic Science at the University of Liverpool, from where he moved to Cambridge, becoming a Lecturer in History. He started at Glasgow on 1 January 1957, and remained until Credits 1982. He established the Department of Economic History, and Text by Rosemary Elliot and Mark Freeman. We are grateful to Laura Brouard, Forbes Munro, Scott appointed a number of lecturers and research assistants, as O’Donnell, Neil Rollings and Tony Slaven for their assistance with the preparation of this display. [3] The early years of the Department The new Professor of Economic History, Sydney Checkland, was welcomed to his first meeting of the Faculty of Arts on 5 February 1957. In the first teaching year of the Department, 1957-8, the Ordinary (Level 1) class had four lectures a week, all at 9am. The course was ‘The Economic History of Britain to 1914’, and the set texts included W. J. Ashley’s The Economic Organisation of England, G. C. Homans’s English Villagers of the Thirteenth Century, and W. H. B. Court’s Economic History of Britain from 1750. Checkland had studied under Court when he was an undergraduate at Birmingham. According to the University Calendar, at Ordinary level, ‘The Lectures will provide an outline of British economic history from Roman times to the twentieth century. The material will be presented in terms of the general problems of economic behaviour and the processes of change, University Gardens. Number 5 was the original home of the Department. including those involving social attitudes and organisation.’ Source: Glasgow University Archives, PHU/37/18. The Higher Ordinary (Level 2) class focused on Scottish students in the Department) in the same year. The latter, who economic history, including both the medieval and modern left in 1962 but returned in 1964, became the longest periods, ending in 1939. As with the Ordinary class, there were serving member of staff in the Department, starting as a four lectures a week. Junior Honours students studied ‘The Research Assistant, becoming a Lecturer in 1964, and later Economic History of the Great Powers’, in which the main topics occupying the Chair in Business History. were ‘the economic evolution of the major European powers, the Atlantic community, and the western expansion in Africa’.
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