The Unrealised Prospect of Historical Economics

2021 ◽  
pp. 196-224
Author(s):  
Keith Tribe
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Detailed Examination ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Historical Experience ◽  
Economic Reasoning ◽  
First Time

During the 1880s a number of Oxford students took an interest in political economy, many of whom as students of history developed what has come to be seen as a ‘historical economics’ distinct from the kind of economics fostered in Cambridge by Alfred Marshall. Prominent among these was William Ashley, and also Arnold Toynbee, whose posthumous Lectures on the Industrial Revolution for the first time linked early nineteenth-century political economy directly to the idea of an ‘industrial revolution’, and interpreting British historical experience in these terms. Ashley had attended Toynbee’s lectures in Oxford and then co-edited them into the book; this chapter examines the kind of arguments that Toynbee put forward in the light of Ashley’s own early writings, and his teaching in Toronto and Harvard, where he was founding Professor of Economic History. Detailed examination of Toynbee’s text suggests that Ashley had a larger role in shaping it than hitherto realised, and this insight is then employed to make sense of Ashley’s subsequent ambivalence about contemporary economics, and his occasional disparagement of any economic reasoning that moved beyond the work of John Stuart Mill’s Principles of Political Economy (1848).

William Prout, M.D., F. R. S., Physician And Chemist (1785-1850)

1970 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 273-280 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century

WILLIAM PROUT was born in a farm which adjoined the small village of Horton in Gloucestershire, where his family had been established for several generations. He proved to be a shining example of that phenomenon of the early nineteenth century, namely, the bright boy of humble origin who was educated by his own exertions and became an outstanding figure in the newly emerging class of semi-professional scientists. Under the denomination of Natural Philosophy they assembled an encyclopaedic understanding of that triad of infant sciences, chemistry, physics and mechanics, upon which, as the result, the Industrial Revolution was largely built.

III. The Association Movement of 1792–3

1961 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Austin Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
English History ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Subordination ◽  
First Time

The fear of revolution, which was to play such an important part in early nineteenth-century English history, was felt for the first time in 1792. Before that year there had been constant fear of disorder, and frequent riots had demonstrated that the forces of order could at times be set at naught and property endangered. In 1792, however, propertied classes and government began to fear not sporadic and localized outbursts of violence, but an alleged nation-wide conspiracy aimed at the overthrow of both property and government, and the end of social subordination.

The Lapérouse Expedition and Geomagnetism: The Unexpected Discovery of Lamanon’s ‘Lost’ Letter and Ledru’s Instructions

2015 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Doug Morrison ◽  
Ivan Barko
Keyword(s):  
Magnetic Field ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Earth’S Magnetic Field ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Terrestrial Magnetism ◽  
Earth's Magnetic Field ◽  
History Of ◽  
Marquis De Condorcet ◽  
First Time

In January 1787, on board Lapérouse's Boussole anchored off Macao, the chevalier de Lamanon wrote a letter to the marquis de Condorcet, the then permanent secretary of the Académie Royale des Sciences in Paris. Lamanon's letter contained a summary of his magnetic observations made up to that point on Lapérouse's famous but ill-fated expedition. The letter, amongst other detail, included evidence that the Earth's magnetic field increased in intensity from the equator towards the poles. Sent to Condorcet via the then minister for the French Navy (the maréchal de Castries), the letter was subsequently lost, but not before it was copied. The copy, with early nineteenth-century ownership identified first to Nicolas Philippe Ledru and subsequently to Louis Isidore Duperrey, was itself then lost for over 150 years, but recently rediscovered bound-in with other manuscripts related to the Lapérouse expedition and terrestrial magnetism, including instructions by Ledru and remarks written in the 1830s and 1840s by Duperrey on Lamanon's letter and observations. The significance of Lamanon's letter and the Ledru and Duperrey manuscripts to the history of geomagnetism is discussed here. Duperrey's notes are transcribed in French for the first time and the Lamanon, Ledru and Duperrey manuscripts are translated into English, also for the first time.

scholarly journals Migration and Memorials: Irish Cultural Identity in Early Nineteenth-Century Lowell, Massachusetts

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 318-341
Author(s):  
Colm Donnelly ◽  
Eileen Murphy ◽  
Dave McKean ◽  
Lynne McKerr
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Industrial Town ◽  
Place Of Origin ◽  
Nineteenth Century United States ◽  
Source Of Information ◽  
Insight Into

AbstractLowell is considered as the birthplace of the industrial revolution in the early nineteenth-century United States. Originating in 1822, the new textile factories harnessed the waters of the Merrimack River using a system of canals, dug and maintained by laborers. While this work employed many local Yankees, it also attracted groups of emigrant Irish workers. Grave memorials are a valuable source of information concerning religious and ethnic identity and an analysis of the slate headstones contained within Yard One of St Patrick’s Cemetery, opened in 1832, provides insight into the mindset of this migrant community. The headstones evolved from contemporary Yankee memorials but incorporated Roman Catholic imagery, while the inclusion of shamrocks and details of place of origin on certain memorials attests to a strong sense of Irish identity. The blatant display of such features at a time of ethnic and religious sectarian tensions in Massachusetts demonstrates the confidence that the Irish had of their place in the new industrial town.

Dugald Stewart on intellectual character

1997 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 307-320 ◽  
Author(s):  
JENNIFER TANNOCH-BLAND
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Intellectual Culture ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Intellectual Character ◽  
History Of

Dugald Stewart (1753–1828) lectured in astronomy and political economy, held the chair of mathematics at Edinburgh University from 1775 to 1785, then the chair of moral philosophy from 1785 to 1810, and wrote extensively on metaphysics, political economy, ethics, philology, aesthetics, psychology and the history of philosophy and the experimental sciences. He is commonly regarded as the last voice of the Scottish Enlightenment, the articulate disciple of Thomas Reid, father of Scottish common sense philosophy. Recently some historians have begun to rediscover elements of the contribution Stewart made to early nineteenth-century British intellectual culture, and his Collected Works have been republished with a new introduction by Knud Haakonssen.

scholarly journals Narrativity, Narrative Identity, and Social Action: Rethinking English Working-Class Formation

1992 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 591-630 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret R. Somers
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Narrative Identity ◽  
Class Struggle ◽  
Class Conflict ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Working People ◽  
History Of

The nineteenth-century English working class bears a most peculiar burden and embodies a most peculiar paradox. Like Auden’s academic warriors who spar with “smiles and Christian names,” historians, economists, and sociologists have pushed and prodded early nineteenth-century English working people into procrustean political positions to support or disconfirm Marx’s predictions of revolutionary class conflict erupting from the contradictions of capitalism. A Manichaean concern locks the debate into an impasse. Were early nineteenth-century workers revolutionary or reformist? Was there a class struggle in the industrial revolution? The questions remain unresolved. Yet, surely it is the history of English working peoples that has suffered from this burden of praising or burying Marxism through competing interpretations of their early stories?

Utilitarianism and Distributive Justice: The Civil Law and the Foundations of Bentham's Economic Thought

Utilitas ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. J. Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
General Structure ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Prison Reform ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
Wealth Of Nations

Between 1787, and the end of his life in 1832, Bentham turned his attention to the development and application of economic ideas and principles within the general structure of his legislative project. For seventeen years this interest was manifested through a number of books and pamphlets, most of which remained in manuscript form, that develop a distinctive approach to economic questions. Although Bentham was influenced by Adam Smith's An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, he neither adopted a Smithian vocabulary for addressing questions of economic principle and policy, nor did he accept many of the distinctive features of Smith's economic theory. One consequence of this was that Bentham played almost no part in the development of the emerging science of political economy in the early nineteenth century. The standard histories of economics all emphasize how little he contributed to the mainstream of late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century debate by concentrating attention on his utilitarianism and the psychology of hedonism on which it is premised. Others have argued that the calculating nature of his theory of practical reason reduced the whole legislative project to a crude attempt to apply economics to all aspects of social and political life. Put at its simplest this argument amounts to the erroneous claim that Bentham's science of legislation is reducible to the science of political economy. A different but equally dangerous error would be to argue that because Bentham's conception of the science of legislation comprehends all the basic forms of social relationships, there can be no science of political economy as there is no autonomous sphere of activity governed by the principles of economics. This approach is no doubt attractive from an historical point of view given that the major premise of this argument is true, and that many of Bentham's ‘economic’ arguments are couched in terms of his theory of legislation. Yet it fails to account for the undoubted importance of political economy within Bentham's writings, not just on finance, economic policy, colonies and preventive police, but also in other aspects of his utilitarian public policy such as prison reform, pauper management, and even constitutional reform. All of these works reflect a conception of political economy in its broadest terms. However, this conception of political economy differs in many respects from that of Bentham's contemporaries, and for this reason Bentham's distinctive approach to problems of economics and political economy has largely been misunderstood.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document