William Ashley (economic historian)

William Ashley
Sir William Ashley by Bassano, 11 May 1923
Born	25 February 1860 Bermondsey, South London
Died	23 July 1927(1927-07-23) (aged 67) Canterbury
Nationality	English
Field	Economic history
School or tradition	English historical school

Sir William James Ashley (25 February 1860 – 23 July 1927) was an influential English economic historian. His major intellectual influence was in organizing 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.

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 skepticism 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. 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.