John Harold Clapham (1873-1946)

Martin Daunton

Introduction

In 1928, the University of Cambridge established a Professorship of Economic History—and it was clear that there was only one credible holder of the new post: John Clapham, who had been teaching the subject at Cambridge for the previous 20 years, and had recently published the first volume of An Economic History of Modern Britain. The new Professor was formally assigned to the Faculty of History, but was also an ex officio member of the Board of the Faculty of Economics, a dual identity that well suited Clapham’s intellectual formation as a protege of Lord Acton, the Regius Professor of Modern History, and of Alfred Marshall.

Clapham came from a business background in Lancashire which clearly informed his writings in economic history, with their close attention to the details of industrial organisation and social conditions. His father left the family farm in Yorkshire and served an apprenticeship with a jeweller in Bradford, before moving to Manchester as a salesman, where he rose to be the head of a firm of silversmiths and jewellers. His mother was the daughter of a smallware manufacturer in Manchester (Trevelyan 1949: 22). The family lived in Broughton, a suburb of Salford, before moving to the neighbouring

M. Daunton (h)

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

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017

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

DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-41233-1_19

town of Prestwich. Broughton was markedly different from the descriptions of the town’s deprivations in Engels’s The Condition of the Working Class in England or Robert Roberts’s memories of ‘the classic slum’ (Roberts 1971). It was a more salubrious area, developed by the local landowner as a suburb with large villas and terraces for professional and merchant families, including Greeks from the Ottoman Empire who built a large Orthodox church.¹ The Claphams were more prosaically Wesleyan Methodists, and Michael Postan—the second holder of the Professorship of Economic History—commented that Clapham ‘absorbed to the full the sober Nonconformist spirit of his paternal household’ and inherited from his father ‘the intellectual and moral virtues of the Victorian middle class at their best—a head which was shrewd and cool, an outlook which was wholly unsentimental and a rule of life disciplined to the point of being hard’ (Postan 1946: 56). It was certainly a background which provided insight into the development of the industrial economy that was to be Clapham’s main scholarly achievement: close to Manchester and the cotton trade, and to the cosmopolitan merchants and professional classes who created a commercial, industrial society in the north of England.

In 1887, Clapham was sent to the Leys School in Cambridge, a Wesleyan establishment set up in 1875 to provide a public school education for the sons of affluent Methodists. Clapham was a successful sportsman, coming second in the public schools’ quarter mile and playing cricket. A fellow historian, G.N. Clark, remembered him as ‘tall, strongly built and energetic’ (Clark 1946: 340)—and he remained an active mountaineer, climbing in the Alps or Lake District every summer for 40 years and being elected vice-president of the Alpine Club. He took part in debating and in the literary society at school, where he was also a star pupil in history. His father’s leisure activity was reading the works of Lecky, Buckle, and Freeman, and Clapham was inspired by the history master at the Leys, G.E. Green, who had graduated from Cambridge with a First in history in 1885. Clapham was excused ordinary routine lessons and placed under Green’s guidance. In 1892, he won a history exhibition to King’s College, Cambridge, graduating with a First in 1895.^{[1] [2]}

During his history degree, Clapham was taught economic history by William Cunningham, to whom he paid tribute in his Inaugural Lecture in 1929 as one of the two outstanding economic historians of his time (Clapham 1929: 7). Cunningham was appointed an examiner in the new History Tripos in 1878, with responsibility for lecturing in economic history, a duty that led to the publication of his textbook on The Growth of English Industry and Commerce in 1882. He was appointed a University Lecturer in the subject in 1884. Clapham also attended Marshall’s lectures and classes, who recorded on his registration card that he ‘shows force’, and remarked that he was the best ‘Historical man’ he had taught (see Groenewegen 1995: 327, and Marshall to Browning, 21 November 1895, quoted in Whitaker 1996a: 138). Clapham stayed on to read economics in Part II of the Moral Sciences Tripos; a separate Economics Tripos did not start until 1903. As we shall see, Marshall and Cunningham disagreed about the methodology of economics, over the role of induction and deduction, of theory and fact, with Clapham taking a more consensual and emollient line.

At this stage, the route to an academic career was through a dissertation to secure election to a college Fellowship. In 1896, Clapham secured the Lightfoot Scholarship in Ecclesiastical History, and started work on his Fellowship dissertation on the causes of the war of 1792. The dissertation won the Prince Consort Prize awarded for the best dissertation involving original historical research by members of the University who were not more than four years from admission to their first Cambridge degree. It also secured him a Fellowship of King’s College. The dissertation dealt with the first war between revolutionary France and Europe, and was a study in conventional diplomatic and high political history. He thanked Acton in the Preface to the book—and it was Acton who suggested that his next project deal with the French Revolution. His study of The Abbe Sieyes: An Essay in the Politics of the French Revolution was published in 1912. However, neither study explained political events and ideas in terms of economic conditions; they provided an essentially political narrative. But Clapham was also encouraged, by Marshall, to redirect his energies to economic history which marked a significant change in his intellectual direction.^[3]

Clapham was teaching economic history in the History Tripos, as well as assisting Marshall in his teaching responsibilities for the general course in economics—a considerable burden caused by the refusal of Foxwell to assist which left Marshall ‘the whole of the drudgery side of economic teaching’ (Marshall to Foxwell, 14 May 1901, quoted in Whitaker 1996a: 319; italics in original). Marshall turned to Clapham for support. In November 1897, Marshall wrote to Acton that Clapham was ‘looking over the papers done by my “general” class; and I see much of him. I think he is a splendid fellow’. Marshall had clear plans for Clapham to fill a serious lacuna in economic history:

I feel that the absence of any tolerable account of the economic development of England during the last century and a half is a disgrace to the land, and a grievous hindrance to the right understanding of the economic problems of our time.. .but till recently the man for the work has not yet appeared. But now I think the man is in sight. Clapham has more analytic faculty than any thorough historian whom I have ever taught: his future work is I think still uncertain: a little force would I think turn him this way or that. If you could turn him towards XVIII or XIX century economic history, economists would ever be grateful to you (Marshall to Acton, 13 November 1897, quoted in Whitaker 1996a: 206).

The ‘little force’ set the direction for Clapham’s future career. He acknowledged in his Inaugural Lecture that Marshall pointed him in the direction of economic history: ‘I hesitated then, for Acton’s power was on me, as I hope it still is. But Marshall has prevailed’ (Clapham 1929: 8-9).

By 1901, Marshall was concerned that Clapham’s assistance—invaluable though it was—had created a problem for ‘it raised a wall of division between me and my class: I did not get inside their minds’, and in any case, Clapham’s ‘turn of mind has always been dominantly historical’. Marshall hoped that he had the solution in A.C. Pigou (Marshall to Foxwell, 14 May 1901, quoted in Whitaker 1996a: 320).^[4] This concern over the future provision of teaching was linked to Marshall’s desire to create a new Economics Tripos—a proposal that was dividing historians and economists. In 1902, Clapham took the Chair of Economics at Yorkshire College, soon to be the University of Leeds. According to G.M. Trevelyan, the appointment was possibly the result of Marshall’s influence, and was a solution to the problems caused by the lack of career opportunities in history at Cambridge and doubtless a means of creating an opening for Pigou (Trevelyan 1949: 23).

At Leeds, Clapham turned to a study of the local worsted and woollen industries, somewhat in the style of Marshall’s concern for industrial districts. The book appeared in 1907, and rested, in the words of Clark, on a ‘vivid imagination of the physical facts’ and a careful use of statistics. Clark pointed out that the book was not historical but could only have been written by a historian with an orderly mind (Clark 1946: 344). In 1905 Clapham married Mary Margaret Green, the daughter of a surgeon from Ross in Herefordshire, who was working in Leeds for the Yorkshire Ladies’ Council of Education; they had one son and three daughters. Clapham remained in touch with Marshall during his time in Leeds. He signed the paper in support of the new Economics Tripos, despite his criticism of its excessively theoretical nature. He also offered support to the free trade manifesto in 1903 (Groenewegen 2012: 70-71).

The stay in Leeds was professionally and personally successful, but Clapham was relieved to return to Cambridge in 1908 as a Fellow of King’s, succeeding Browning as Assistant Tutor in history and, from 1913, as Tutor. Clapham took responsibility for the lectures in economic history which he delivered from 1908 to 1935, covering the entire period from prehistory to the present (Trevelyan 1949: 24). According to Clark, these lectures were highly regarded for their ‘complete mastery in delivery and presentation’. They formed the basis of Clapham’s Concise Economic History of Britain from the Earliest Times to 1750 (Clark 1959: 20).^[5] Marshall welcomed Clapham’s return, and thought that he was well suited to the task of lecturing in economic history (Groenewegen 2012: 70). When Marshall retired in 1908, he supported Pigou’s appointment to the Professorship of Economics, but he also argued that if a second chair were created, he would back Clapham as intellectually superior to Foxwell. Marshall expressed his ‘eager admiration’ for Clapham, and ‘would always go to him as counsellor of the first weight in any difficult matter of judgement. I think his achieved work is of a very high order, full of individuality and strength’ (Marshall to Neville Keynes, 13 December 1908, quoted in Whitaker 1996b: 214-215). Marshall’s support for Clapham is indicative of his willingness to accept a more historical approach to economics than Cunningham would admit.

In 1916, Clapham joined the Board of Trade, and served as a member of the Cabinet Committee on Priorities, for which he was appointed CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in 1918. This experience of economic policy led him to resume his interests in economic history, and to write his first major book on the subject: The Economic Development of France and Germany (Clapham 1921). He also embarked on the project which Marshall had proposed in 1897: an economic history of modern Britain from

1820 to 1914. This study appeared in three volumes, starting with The Early Railway Age, 1820-1850 in 1926 which was dedicated to the memory of Marshall, ‘who told me, 25 years ago, that it was my business to write something of the sort’, and to Cunningham who taught him economic history. As Clapham said in his Inaugural Lecture, the foundation of the Professorship of Economic History was a memorial to both men (Clapham 1929: 9). The second volume, Free Trade and Steel, 1850-1886, appeared in 1932; and the final volume, Machines and National Rivalries (1887-1914) with an Epilogue (1914-1929), in 1938. The first volume was welcomed by The Times for offering ‘a picture of normal society in a past age in the same fullness of detail as we can picture our own age ... It is the beginning of what we have never had before, a history of the English people’ (quoted on the jacket of Machines and National Rivalries; italics in original).

In 1928, Clapham was appointed to the newly created Professorship of Economic History at Cambridge, which he held until his retirement in 1938. He became a Fellow of the British Academy in 1928, and served as President from 1940 until his death in 1946. He was vice-provost of King’s College between 1933 and 1943, and held a number of public and charitable appointments. He chaired the Cambridge Employment Committee and Refugee Committee, and served on the panel to consider conscientious objectors. He was a leading member of the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning which assisted refugee scholars from Nazi Europe (Trevelyan 1949: 25). At the time of his death, he was chair of the Committee on the Provision of Social and Economic Research (Clapham Committee); he saw its report in draft, and its recommendations were adopted with the creation of an InterDepartmental Committee on Social and Economic Research in October 1946 ‘to survey and advise upon research work in government departments’, suggesting ways in which material could be used for research in government and beyond. During the war, his academic work continued. The absence of colleagues on war service meant that Clapham taught throughout the war, and the death of Eileen Power in 1940 meant that he was solely responsible for editing the first volume of the Cambridge Economic History of Europe which appeared in 1941; he was well advanced with editing a second volume at the time of his death. In 1944, his two-volume history of the Bank of England up to 1914 appeared, marking the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of its charter. It was the only book for which he carried out archival research. Clark pointed out that Clapham ‘always disparaged his own work in comparison with work based on unprinted records’, but that he showed an ability to use such sources to write the history of an institution for which he was well suited to be the historian—‘solid, undemonstrative, unique’. Postan thought it the ‘perhaps the best of his books’ (Clark 1946: 349; Postan 1946: 58).^[6]

Arguably, Clapham’s most significant achievement was in providing the first detailed overview of British economic history since the Industrial Revolution—but it was not entirely what he wanted. As he explained to Clark in 1930, ‘I decided to shift into economic history for 20 years—if I were allowed—and to begin at 50 to build up some sort of history on its economic frame’. He feared that by the time he completed his account of the economic development of modern Britain, he would not have the ‘years, learning and vigour’ for the wider task (Clapham to Clark, 9 February 1930, quoted in Clark 1946: 343). Some of his sense of disappointment is apparent in the Introduction to the Concise Economic History: ‘Of all varieties of history the economic is the most fundamental. Not the most important: foundations exist to carry better things’ (Clapham 1949: xvii). This comment must not be taken to suggest that Clapham was a historical materialist. He assumed that economic and political history could be written as separate narratives without any causal superiority; he never made any general reflections on the connection between economics and politics.

Clapham remained a serious and somewhat forbidding product of his Wesleyan upbringing. He remained a committed Christian throughout his life, retaining an interest in biblical scholarship, and gradually moving from Methodism to Anglicanism (Clark 1946: 339). A fellow undergraduate saw him as somewhat apart from the world of King’s:

He was not the man to throw up the old lightheartedly and plunge without restraint into a more highly coloured world. I imagined him fighting a strong defensive fight for each old position and, when it was finally abandoned, taking resolute care that all that was good in the old one was retained. Such a progress would be quiet, a little dour, and very self-contained (Giblin 1949: 15).

He had a reputation for being kind and just, but also for being somewhat stiff which prevented him from forming easy relations. His general demeanour was ‘professorial’, ‘rather formal and perhaps a little important. He did not cultivate airs and graces; he was never effusive in praise or complaints, and he sometimes expressed disapproval or disagreement with uncompromising bluntness’ (Clark 1946: 351). Postan did see a mellowing in older age when Clapham became more tolerant, ‘kindlier and freer’. His forbidding and dour manner was linked to a sense of moral responsibility and engagement in charitable activities which was expressed in his work for refugees from Germany, and support for gradual reforms to create a fairer society. Postan felt that ‘his attitude to most things was essentially rationalist, positivist and matter- of-fact. In politics he was essentially a Liberal, but his politics had nothing of the latter-day radicalism in it’. Indeed, Clark saw him as attached to ‘old standards of morality and patriotism that might be called conservative and conventional’, disliking speculation and distancing himself from ‘the more surprising intellectual adventures’ of other Fellows of King’s (Postan 1946: 56, 58; Clark 1946: 345).

In the next three sections, I will explore some of the implications of Clapham’s intellectual and personal formation by addressing three themes. First, what were his attitudes to economics, and above all his relationship with Marshall and the emergence of a more theoretical approach to economics? Second, what was his approach to economic history? Third, what were his attitudes to politics and policy, shaped by his economics, his study of economic history, and his personal values?

• [1] On Broughton, see Farrer and Brownbill (1911: 217—222) and Trevelyan (1949: 22).
• [2] See the recollections of A.C. Pigou (1949: 17—19), with whom Clapham often climbed, and his schoolcontemporary H.C. Gutteridge (1949: 12—13); see also Postan (1946: 56) and Clark (1946: 340).
• [3] The dissertation was expanded and revised as The Causes of the War of1792 (Clapham 1899); see alsoClark (1946: 341, 346).
• [4] See also Marshall to Neville Keynes, 4 March 1900, in which he commented that Pigou was the ‘idealman’ but not yet ready. Foxwell was not impressed: he [Pigou] was ‘least qualified to deal with a generalclass as he is such a prig’ (quoted in Koot 1987: 132).
• [5] The book was published posthumously: its origin is explained by John Saltmarsh in the Preface toClapham (1949). Clapham did not complete the second volume, which was undertaken by W.H.B. Courtand appeared in 1954.
• [6] For more on the Inter-Departmental Committee on Social and Economic Research, see The NationalArchive: RG25. Available at: http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C13350.