William Ashley
Encyclopedia
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
economic historian. His greatest work of note is The Economic Organisation of England, still a set text on many A-level and University syllabuses.
Life and career
Ashley was born in BermondseyBermondsey
Bermondsey is an area in London on the south bank of the river Thames, and is part of the London Borough of Southwark. To the west lies Southwark, to the east Rotherhithe, and to the south, Walworth and Peckham.-Toponomy:...
, South London
South London
South London is the southern part of London, England, United Kingdom.According to the 2011 official Boundary Commission for England definition, South London includes the London boroughs of Bexley, Bromley, Croydon, Greenwich, Kingston, Lambeth, Lewisham, Merton, Southwark, Sutton and...
on 25 February 1860. The marginal life of his early years was shaped by the cyclical
Business cycle
The term business cycle refers to economy-wide fluctuations in production or economic activity over several months or years...
underemployment
Underemployment
Underemployment refers to an employment situation that is insufficient in some important way for the worker, relative to a standard. Examples include holding a part-time job despite desiring full-time work, and overqualification, where the employee has education, experience, or skills beyond the...
of his father, a journeyman
Journeyman
A journeyman is someone who completed an apprenticeship and was fully educated in a trade or craft, but not yet a master. To become a master, a journeyman had to submit a master work piece to a guild for evaluation and be admitted to the guild as a master....
hatter
Hatter
A hatter is a person engaged in hatmaking.Hatter also may refer to:*The Hatter, a fictional character in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland* Luton Town F.C., team a.k.a. "The Hatters"* Stockport County F.C., team a.k.a. "The Hatters"...
; his skepticism of free trade economics may have originated from his observations during his formative years. He was educated at St Olave's Grammar School
St Olave's Grammar School
St Olave's and St Saviour's Grammar School is a super-selective boys' secondary school in Orpington, Greater London, England. The school is consistently one of the top achieving state schools in the UK and it was The Sunday Times State School of the Year in 2008...
and then at Balliol College, Oxford
Balliol College, Oxford
Balliol College , founded in 1263, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England but founded by a family with strong Scottish connections....
. He escaped the near-choiceless world of his youth through academic brilliance and, ultimately, by winning the 1878 Brackenbury history scholarship to Balliol College, which was then pursuing social uplift policies under the mastership of the legendary Benjamin Jowett
Benjamin Jowett
Benjamin Jowett was renowned as an influential tutor and administrative reformer in the University of Oxford, a theologian and translator of Plato. He was Master of Balliol College, Oxford.-Early career:...
. At Oxford he was influenced by Jowett, Bishop William Stubbs
William Stubbs
William Stubbs was an English historian and Bishop of Oxford.The son of William Morley Stubbs, a solicitor, he was born at Knaresborough, Yorkshire, and was educated at Ripon Grammar School and Christ Church, Oxford, where he graduated in 1848, obtaining a first-class in classics and a third in...
, and especially by the economic historian, Arnold Toynbee
Arnold Toynbee
Arnold Toynbee was a British economic historian also noted for his social commitment and desire to improve the living conditions of the working classes.-Biography:...
.
Ashley was appointed Lecturer at Lincoln College, Oxford
Lincoln College, Oxford
Lincoln College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. It is situated on Turl Street in central Oxford, backing onto Brasenose College and adjacent to Exeter College...
in 1885. In July of 1888 he married Margaret Hill, daughter of George Birkbeck Hill
George Birkbeck Norman Hill
George Birkbeck Norman Hill , English editor and author, son of Arthur Hill, headmaster of Bruce Castle School, was born at Bruce Castle, Tottenham, Middlesex. He dropped his third name, Norman, publishing as just George Birkbeck Hill; to family and friends he was known as Birkbeck, not as George...
, and in summer of that year he and his bride sailed to Canada to his new academic post. From 1888 to 1892 he was Professor
Professor
A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...
of Political Economy
Political economy
Political economy originally was the term for studying production, buying, and selling, and their relations with law, custom, and government, as well as with the distribution of national income and wealth, including through the budget process. Political economy originated in moral philosophy...
and Constitutional History at the University of Toronto
University of Toronto
The University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in Upper Canada...
. The inaugural lecture he gave there was dedicated to Gustav Schmoller, one of the German scholars in whose hands economic history
Economic history
Economic history is the study of economies or economic phenomena in the past. Analysis in economic history is undertaken using a combination of historical methods, statistical methods and by applying economic theory to historical situations and institutions...
was more developed in Germany than it was in England. In 1892 Ashley moved on to Harvard, becoming the first Professor of Economic History in the English-speaking world.
In 1901 Ashley left Harvard to take the Chair of Commerce
Commerce
While business refers to the value-creating activities of an organization for profit, commerce means the whole system of an economy that constitutes an environment for business. The system includes legal, economic, political, social, cultural, and technological systems that are in operation in any...
at the University of Birmingham
University of Birmingham
The University of Birmingham is a British Redbrick university located in the city of Birmingham, England. It received its royal charter in 1900 as a successor to Birmingham Medical School and Mason Science College . Birmingham was the first Redbrick university to gain a charter and thus...
, where he fostered the development of its commercial programme. Robin Emery was a big influence in his life. From 1902 until 1923, he served as first Professor
Professor
A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...
of Commerce and Dean
Dean (education)
In academic administration, a dean is a person with significant authority over a specific academic unit, or over a specific area of concern, or both...
of the Faculty at the university, which he was instrumental in founding. At the time it was England's first Faculty of Commerce, and a hundred years later there are over one hundred Business Schools in the UK; Birmingham can perhaps claim to be the ancestor of them all. Ashley said in 1902 that the aim of the new Faculty was the education not of the "rank and file, but of the officers of the industrial and commercial army: of those who, as principals, directors, managers, secretaries, heads of department, etc., will ultimately guide the business activity of the country."
In its first year, the annual costs of the Faculty, including staff salaries, were £8,200 - there were six students, a lecture room and two classrooms. By 1908, fifteen men had graduated through the School, many with businesses waiting for their skills. Ashley stated: "I quite expect that before I retire I shall be able to gather round me a room full of Managers and Managing Directors who have been students in the Faculty of Commerce." A large room would be needed now: over the past 100 years it is estimated that more than 15,000 students have passed successfully through the School.
Ashley was insistent that the course should provide a broad education, with students not only studying commerce
Commerce
While business refers to the value-creating activities of an organization for profit, commerce means the whole system of an economy that constitutes an environment for business. The system includes legal, economic, political, social, cultural, and technological systems that are in operation in any...
but also languages and modern history
Modern history
Modern history, or the modern era, describes the historical timeline after the Middle Ages. Modern history can be further broken down into the early modern period and the late modern period after the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution...
. Even then he recognised the importance of the international context in which business operated, wanting his graduates to be able to understand the background to the political and economic policies of other countries. Given Britain's position as a colonial power at the turn of the century, this was a far-sighted approach.
Edgbaston
Edgbaston is an area in the city of Birmingham in England. It is also a formal district, managed by its own district committee. The constituency includes the smaller Edgbaston ward and the wards of Bartley Green, Harborne and Quinton....
, Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
, and was heavily involved in local affairs, and ultimately knighted for his work in 1917. From 1899 to 1920 Ashley was also an examiner
Examiner
The Examiner was a weekly paper founded by Leigh and John Hunt in 1808. For the first fifty years it was a leading intellectual journal expounding radical principles, but from 1865 it repeatedly changed hands and political allegiance, resulting in a rapid decline in readership and loss of...
in history, economics and commerce in the Universities of Cambridge, London, Durham, Wales and Ireland. In 1919 he was appointed to the Royal Commission
Royal Commission
In Commonwealth realms and other monarchies a Royal Commission is a major ad-hoc formal public inquiry into a defined issue. They have been held in various countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Saudi Arabia...
investigating "the economic prospects of the agricultural industry in Great Britain".
Lasting Influence
During the years 1900-1906, Ashley wielded some political influence on the Conservative government's economic policy, notably supporting Joseph ChamberlainJoseph Chamberlain
Joseph Chamberlain was an influential British politician and statesman. Unlike most major politicians of the time, he was a self-made businessman and had not attended Oxford or Cambridge University....
's plans for tariff reform. In his 1903 work, The Tariff Problem, Ashley strongly supported Chamberlain's proposals. Chamberlain wrote to Ashley on 26 April 1904, saying his book was "the best manual we have". Chamberlain's biographer Peter Marsh has said Ashley's book was "By all accounts the most persuasive book-length rationale for tariff reform, Ashley's work commanded the respect even of John Morley". In his 1904 book The Progress of the German Working Class in the Last Quarter of a Century, Ashley argued that tariffs in Germany had ensured employment there and had also raised revenue for social insurance and old pensions.
In 1925 Ashley retired from the Birmingham University chair of Commerce that he had occupied since 1901. Despite being now very elderly and supposedly retired for the benefit of his health, he was once again instrumental in the founding of a major movement; The Economic History Society
The Economic History Society
The Economic History Society is a learned society that was established at the London School of Economics in 1926 to support the research and teaching of economic history in the United Kingdom and internationally...
. When Eileen Power
Eileen Power
Eileen Edna LePoer Power was an important British economic historian and medievalist. Eileen Power was the eldest daughter of a stockbroker and was born at Altrincham in 1889. She was a sister of Rhoda Power, the children's writer and broadcaster...
came to organise the economic history session at the second Anglo-American Historical Conference at the Institute of Historical Research in July 1926, two strands fell carefully together. Ashley was to give a paper on "the place of economic history in university studies", and there was to be discussion of, as Eileen Power put it, "the new Economic History Society and the Economic History Review and other methods of promoting the subject".
The meeting, on 14 July 1926, brought the Society into existence. Sir William Ashley duly became the first President of the Society, and his paper at the foundation meeting was published as the first article in the first number of the Economic History Review. He died on 23 July 1927, and his picture hangs in the National Portrait Gallery.
Major works
- 1888 — An Introduction to English Economic History and Theory, Part I: The Middle Ages; 4th ed. (1909), on line, McMaster University. — a book dedicated to the memory of Arnold ToynbeeArnold ToynbeeArnold Toynbee was a British economic historian also noted for his social commitment and desire to improve the living conditions of the working classes.-Biography:...
. - 1893 — An Introduction to English Economic History and Theory, Part II: The End of the Middle Ages, (1893); 4th ed., (1906) on line, McMaster University
- 1900 — Surveys historic and economic
- 1903 — The Tariff Problem, Westminster, P. J. King
- 1903 — The adjustment of wages: a study in the coal and iron industries of Great Britain and America, London, Longmans, Green
- 1904 — The Progress of the German working classes in the last quarter of the century, London: Longmans, Green & Co.
- 1907 — "The Present Position of Political Economy", Economic Journal, 17(68), pp. 467-89.
- 1912 — Gold and Prices
- 1914 — The Economic Organisation of England: An Outline History, London: Longmans, Green & Co.