The Market for Political Economy: The Advent of Economics in British University Culture, 1850-1905

268 Pages·1993·0.8 MB·English

by  Alon Kadish

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