ECONOMIC HISTORY: Unwin and Clapham

Abstract

(Although there had been occasional historians, A. H. L. Heeren, for example, or P. E. Levasseur or Thorold Rogers, who had dealt with the economic factors in history, the separate discipline of economic history did not gain institutional recognition until the end of the nineteenth century. It was not till 1892 that Harvard University appointed the English scholar, William James Ashley, to a chair in economic history, the first to have been established anywhere. After the turn of the century, with the growing availability of economic and demographic statistics and with the increasing awareness of the decisive influence of economic developments upon society, the study of economic history developed rapidly, particularly in France, England, and the United States.