William James Ashley

Sir William James Ashley (25 February 1860 – 23 July 1927) was an English economic historian. His major intellectual influence was in organising economic history in Great Britain and introducing the ideas of the leading German economic historians, especially Gustav von Schmoller and the historical school of economic history. His chief work is The Economic Organisation of England, still a set text on many A-level and University syllabuses. Life and career Ashley was born in Bermondsey, South London on 25 February 1860. The marginal life of his early years was shaped by the underemployment of his father, a journeyman hatter; his scepticism of free trade economics may have originated from his observations during his formative years. He was educated at St Olave's Grammar School and then at Balliol College, Oxford. 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. At Oxford he was influenced by Jowett, Bishop William Stubbs, and especially by the economic historian, Arnold Toynbee. In 1882, he won the Lothian Prize Essay competition. After Oxford, he studied at Heidelberg University, where he was influenced by the well-developed studies of economic history is developed by Schmoller and Karl Knies. Ashley was appointed Lecturer at Lincoln College, Oxford in 1885. In July 1888 he married Margaret Hill, daughter of George Birkbeck Hill, 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 of Political Economy and Constitutional History at the University of Toronto. The inaugural lecture he gave there was dedicated to Gustav Schmoller, one of the German scholars in whose hands economic history 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 at the University of Birmingham, 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 of Commerce and Dean of the Faculty at the university, which he was instrumental in founding.