Inspired by Toynbee and guided by the scholarship of the German Historical School of Economics, William James Ashley was the most promising and brilliant English historical economist. As a young Oxford economist, his politics were liberal. His opposition to Irish Home Rule, his experience in North America between 1888 and 1900, and his belief that capitalism's contradictions were bringing the liberal phase of history to a close made him an active supporter of imperialism and social reform. When still at Oxford, Ashley hoped that a historically derived economic theory would replace deductive theory as the core of English economics. Just prior to his departure for North America, he had already modified this historicist vision to a historist critique of deductive theory. During the 1890s he focused his attention on the development of economic history as a separate academic discipline. After 1900 he also devoted his talents to applied economics and the creation of a business curriculum at Birmingham. As a historical economist, he insisted that the relativity of economic theory could be demonstrated through economic history and the history of economic thought and that the purpose of economic scholarship was to help guide the nation peacefully toward a more orderly and just “socialized capitalism.”

The Legacy of Toynbee, the Germans, and America

Ashley was born in 1860. He was the son of a sometimes unemployed London hatter and was brought up in the religious and political tradition of dissent. Educated in dissenting schools, he later carried his interest in a social Christianity into the established church, and became a supporter of the Church Social Union.