Cambridge and Economic History

Martin Daunton

Introduction

Sir John Clapham retired from the Professorship of Economic History at Cambridge in 1938—a highly productive scholar who did not create a ‘school’ of economic historians or establish a set of questions on which the next generation could work. Consequently, there was no obvious successor in Cambridge amongst his colleagues or students. The senior economic historian in post was Charles Fay (1884-1961), another pupil of Marshall, who taught economic history at Cambridge before moving to the Chair of Economic History in Toronto in 1921, returning to Cambridge as Reader in economic history from 1931. Fay published extensively, but his interests were too diverse, and his difficult personality, shell shock, and breakdowns counted against him (Groenewegen 2012: Chapter 10; Gault 2011).

A more credible candidate was Eileen Power, who studied history at Girton College, Cambridge, from 1907 to 1910. She was inspired by Ellen McArthur who ‘graduated’ in history in 1885 and took an active part in the suffrage movement. McArthur’s interest in economic history was encouraged by William Cunningham, with whom she collaborated on Outlines of English Industrial History (1895). Cunningham was deeply hostile to Marshall on the methodology of economics and on trade policy—and also on the place

M. Daunton (*)

Formerly Professor of Economic History, Faculty of History, University of Cambridge, UK e-mail: This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it

R.A. Cord (ed.), The Palgrave Companion to Cambridge Economics,

DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-41233-1_8

of women in the University. Cunningham was chairman of the Council of Girton College and supported the study of economic history there. By contrast, Marshall was chairman of the Extension Syndicate which organised adult education classes, and he tried to block McArthur’s appointment as an Extension Lecturer in 1893 on the grounds that lecturing to male audiences would ruin a woman’s character. When Cunningham stopped lecturing in economic history in 1902, McArthur provided a course of lectures for students at women’s colleges in Cambridge, and some male colleges asked if their students could attend. Her main scholarly contribution was articles on wage assessments in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and on women petitioners to the Long Parliament, but her lasting contribution to the subject was her generosity in leaving most of her estate to the University to fund a prize in economic history, which has also been used since the 1970s for a studentship and a lecture series (Berg 1992: 315; Erickson 2004).

McArthur’s students included eminent female economic historians, including Lillian Knowles who taught economic history at the London School of Economics (LSE) from 1904 until her retirement as Professor in 1926. Power followed in her steps to postgraduate study at the LSE, returning to Girton College from 1913 to 1921 as Director of Studies in History, before moving to a Lectureship in Economic History at the LSE in 1921, where she was promoted to Professor in 1931. When Helen Cam, a historian at Girton, suggested that Power apply for the Professorship in Cambridge, she turned down the suggestion:

[I] do find the LSE a much more stimulating place to work in and London a more congenial place to live in than Cambridge ... It would be an honour to hold Clapham’s chair (tho’ not more of an honour than to hold Mrs Knowles’s) — and I know that it would be a good thing from the point of view of the position of women for one of us to get it (Power to Cam, 6 January 1938, quoted in Berg 1992: 326; see also Berg 1996, 2004).

The successful candidate was her former student, research assistant, colleague, and husband, Michael Moissey Postan, who had a major role in transforming economic history in Cambridge.