Name William Cunningham Role Economist | Died June 10, 1919, Cambridge | |
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Education Trinity College, Cambridge Books The growth of English industry a, The Secret of Progress, Christianity and Economic, The Wisdom of the Wise, The Progress of Capitalis | ||
William Cunningham, FBA (29 December 1849 in Edinburgh, Scotland – 10 June 1919 in Cambridge) was a British economist and churchman. He was an eminent economic historian, a proponent of the historical method in economics, and an opponent of free trade.
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Life
Educated at Edinburgh Institution, Edinburgh Academy and University and Trinity College, Cambridge, he graduated BA in 1873, having gained a first class in the Moral Science tripos. In the same year took holy orders, later serving as chaplain of Trinity College, Cambridge from 1880-91. He was university lecturer in history from 1884 to 1891, in which year he was appointed Tooke Professor of Economy and Statistics at King's College London, a post which he held until 1897. He was lecturer in economic history at Harvard University (1899), and Hulsean lecturer at Cambridge (1885). He became vicar of Great St Mary's, Cambridge, in 1887, and was made a fellow of the British Academy. In 1907 he was appointed archdeacon of Ely.
Cunningham's Growth of English Industry and Commerce during the Early and Middle Ages (1890; 4th ed., 1905) and Growth of English Industry and Commerce in Modern Times (1882; 3rd ed., 1903) are among the standard works of reference on the industrial history of England.
Cunningham's eminence as an economic historian gave special importance to his support of Joseph Chamberlain from 1903 onwards in criticizing the English free-trade policies and advocating tariff reform.
He was a critic of the nascent Neoclassical economics, particularly as propounded by his colleague, Alfred Marshall, and the Cambridge School.