History of Economic History at Queen's
Queen’s has a long history in economic history − members of QUCEH are merely dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants.
Economic history was part of the university within a decade of its founding in 1845. Thomas E. Cliffe Leslie, professor of jurisprudence and political economy at Queen’s from 1853, is regarded as one of the founders of the English historical school of political economy – an approach that opposed theoretical economics and advocated empirical and historical analysis of the economy (Backhouse, 2011).
Then, the first bonafide chair in economics at Queen’s was held by an economic historian, Hugh Owen Meredith − who, incidentally, was replaced at his previous affiliation by John Maynard Keynes. Meredith published what is perhaps the first English-language economic history textbook (Meredith, 1908).
Fast-forward some 50 years, and Queen’s economics lecturer R. D. C. Black is researching his seminal work on the relationship between economic theory and economic policy in the context of nineteenth-century Ireland. Black (1960) mixed together two fields that are unfortunately rarely combined today: economic history and the history of economic thought.
In many ways, our institution’s subsequent history of economic history mirrors the history of the field elsewhere in UK academia.
Economic history at Queen’s separated from economics and history in the mid-twentieth century to become its own distinct discipline; first established by Ken H. Connell in the early 1960s, the university maintained a separate economic history department all through Northern Ireland’s Troubles. Members of this department later included Bruce Campbell and Liam Kennedy, both now emeritus professors at Queen’s.
But as elsewhere, this separate department was then collapsed into a combined history school in the late 1990s. And as economic historians retired there, they were replaced by social and cultural historians. The discipline looked to become extinct in this part of the Emerald Isle.
The final stage in our evolution, the re-emergence and renaissance of economic history through the colonisation of the university’s business school, is also not entirely unique to Belfast; there are signs that similar things are occurring elsewhere, at least in the UK. We might be more successful than other universities in terms of our scale, but there is nothing stopping other places from following suit!
References:
Economic history was part of the university within a decade of its founding in 1845. Thomas E. Cliffe Leslie, professor of jurisprudence and political economy at Queen’s from 1853, is regarded as one of the founders of the English historical school of political economy – an approach that opposed theoretical economics and advocated empirical and historical analysis of the economy (Backhouse, 2011).
Then, the first bonafide chair in economics at Queen’s was held by an economic historian, Hugh Owen Meredith − who, incidentally, was replaced at his previous affiliation by John Maynard Keynes. Meredith published what is perhaps the first English-language economic history textbook (Meredith, 1908).
Fast-forward some 50 years, and Queen’s economics lecturer R. D. C. Black is researching his seminal work on the relationship between economic theory and economic policy in the context of nineteenth-century Ireland. Black (1960) mixed together two fields that are unfortunately rarely combined today: economic history and the history of economic thought.
In many ways, our institution’s subsequent history of economic history mirrors the history of the field elsewhere in UK academia.
Economic history at Queen’s separated from economics and history in the mid-twentieth century to become its own distinct discipline; first established by Ken H. Connell in the early 1960s, the university maintained a separate economic history department all through Northern Ireland’s Troubles. Members of this department later included Bruce Campbell and Liam Kennedy, both now emeritus professors at Queen’s.
But as elsewhere, this separate department was then collapsed into a combined history school in the late 1990s. And as economic historians retired there, they were replaced by social and cultural historians. The discipline looked to become extinct in this part of the Emerald Isle.
The final stage in our evolution, the re-emergence and renaissance of economic history through the colonisation of the university’s business school, is also not entirely unique to Belfast; there are signs that similar things are occurring elsewhere, at least in the UK. We might be more successful than other universities in terms of our scale, but there is nothing stopping other places from following suit!
References:
- Backhouse, Roger E. (2011), ‘The Peculiarities of Place: The Irish Historical Economists’, in: Thomas Boylan, Renee Prendergast, and John Turner (eds.), A History of Irish Economic Thought (London: Routledge), pp. 200-214.
- Black, R. D. Collison (1960), Economic Thought and the Irish Question, 1817-1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
- Meredith, Hugh Owen (1908), Outlines of the Economic History of England: A Study in Social Development (Bath: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons).