The Study of Economic History

Abstract

No one can speak in this place on the Study of Economic History without recalling the names of those who have done so before him. The first book on the subject which I read was a volumein the library of classics by one of whom we are all the pupils, our encyclopmedic chairman. The first lecture on it which I attended was by a research student of this School, later a master to whom a host of apprentices owed their instruction in the craft, George Unwin. The personality who gave it its place in our curriculum was Lilian Klnowles, the most inspiring of teachers and most loveable of human beings. A student who inherits a corner of their estate must feel gratitude for their labours and humility at his own. It is not only the memory of distinguished predecessors which fills me with diffidence. When I realised that the penalty of a Professorship was an Inaugural Lecture, I breathed a prayer to the bright goddesses of enterprise and self-help, who are ever at the elbows of teachers of this School. They frowned but did their best. Do not attempt, they said, anything original or profound. It is not your line. Conform to the practice of the representative form, if, wretched historian, you know what that means. For once show real initiative. Study the addresses delivered on similar occasions by more illustrious persons. Aim at the median and you may hit the lower quartile. As always, when addressed by the voice of economic reason, I trembled and obeyed; but, as my researches proceeded, my despondency increased. If, as they inclined me to believe, one function of an Inaugural Lecture is to vindicate the claims of the department of knowledge represented by the lecturer against bold, bad men who would question its primacy, I am conscious of an incapacity for that entertaining branch of litera-