R. H. Tawney
R. H. Tawney | |
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British India | |
Died | 16 January 1962 London, England | (aged 81)
Nationality | English |
Other names | Harry Tawney |
Political party | Labour |
Movement | Christian socialism |
Spouse |
Jeannette Tawney (m. 1909) |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | Balliol College, Oxford |
Academic work | |
Discipline | |
Sub-discipline | Economic history |
Institutions | London School of Economics |
Notable works |
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Part of a series on |
Christian socialism |
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Richard Henry Tawney
Early life and education
Born on 30 November 1880 in
Christian socialism
Whilst Tawney remained a regular churchgoer, his Christian faith remained a personal affair, and he rarely spoke publicly about the basis of his beliefs.[16] In keeping with his social radicalism, Tawney came to regard the Church of England as a "class institution, making respectful salaams to property and gentility, and with too little faith in its own creed to call a spade a spade in the vulgar manner of the New Testament".[17]
For three years from January 1908, Tawney taught the first
World War I Service
During the
Academic historian
Tawney's first important work as a historian was The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century (1912).
Tawney's historical works reflected his ethical concerns and preoccupations in economic history. He was profoundly interested in the issue of the enclosure of land in the English countryside in the 16th and 17th centuries and in Max Weber's thesis on the connection between the appearance of Protestantism and the rise of capitalism. His belief in the rise of the gentry in the century before the outbreak of the Civil War in England provoked the 'Storm over the gentry' in which his methods were subjected to severe criticisms by Hugh Trevor-Roper and John Cooper.
Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926) was his classic work
The Oxford historian Valerie Pearl once described Tawney as having appeared to those in his presence as having an "aura of sanctity". He lent his name to the Tawney Society at Rugby School, the R. H. Tawney Economic History Society at the London School of Economics, the annual Tawney Memorial Lectures (
Adrian Hastings wrote:
Behind the list of major publications was the mind of a man tirelessly guiding government, Labour movement, Church and academic community towards a new society, at once fully democratic, consciously socialistic and fully in accord with Christian belief. In effective intellectual terms it is doubtful whether anyone else had remotely comparable influence in the evolution of British society in his generation[12]
Activism
Social criticism
Two of Tawney's books stand out as his most influential social criticism:[31] The Acquisitive Society (1920), Richard Crossman's "socialist bible",[12] and Equality (1931), "his seminal work".[33] The former, one of his most widely read books,[27] criticised the selfish individualism of modern society. Capitalism, he insisted, encourages acquisitiveness and thereby corrupts everyone. In the latter book, Tawney argues for an egalitarian society.
Both works reflected Tawney's Christian moral values, "exercised a profound influence" in Britain and abroad, and "anticipated the Welfare state".[31] As David Ormrod of the University of Kent stresses, "intermittent opposition from the Churches to the new idolatry of wealth surfaced from time to time but no individual critics have arisen with a combination of political wisdom, historical insight and moral force to match that of R.H. Tawney, the prophet who denounced acquisitiveness".[34]
Christian socialist politics
Historian Geoffrey Foote has highlighted Tawney's "political shifts": "From an endorsement of a radical Guild socialism in 1921 through his authorship of the gradualist Labour & the Nation in 1928, his savage attacks on gradualism in the 1930s to his endorsement of revisionism in the 1950s". Nevertheless, the same author also argues that "Tawney's importance lies in his ability to propose a malleable yet coherent socialist philosophy which transcends any particular political situation. In this sense, his mature political thought never really changed".[35]
In 1906, Tawney joined the
He participated in numerous government bodies concerned with industry and education. In 1919, he and Sidney Webb were among the trade union side representatives on the Royal Commission on the Coal Mining Industry, chaired by Sir John Sankey. Equal division of membership between union and employer representatives resulted in opposing recommendations on the future organisation of the industry.[41] The union side recommended nationalisation largely due to Tawney and Webb.[23]
His
Adult education advocacy
Leveraging his base among intellectuals in the Labour Party, he spent years in making a lasting impact on democratising higher education. He promoted equality, through restructuring and curricular innovation.
Death and interment
Tawney died in London on 16 January 1962. He is buried on the eastern side of Highgate Cemetery.[45] Richard Rees was his literary executor. [46]
Works
- The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century (1912), London: Longman, Green and Co.
- English Economic History: Select Documents (1914, compiled and edited with Alfred Edward Bland and Philip Anthony Brown)
- The Acquisitive Society (1920); republished Harcourt Brace and Howe (Mineola, NY, Dover: 2004; ISBN 0-486-43629-2)
- Secondary Education for All (1922)
- Education: the Socialist Policy (1924)
- "Historical Introduction" to A Discourse Upon Usury, By Thomas Wilson (1925)
- Tudor Economic Documents: being Select Documents illustrating the Economic and Social History of Tudor England (1925, editor with Eileen Power)
- ISBN 0-7658-0455-7)
- ISBN 0-04-323014-8)
- Land and Labour in China (1932) (excerpt)
- Social History and Literature (1950)
- The Attack and Other Papers (1953)
- Business and Politics under James I: Lionel Cranfield as Merchant and Minister (1958), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
- ISBN 0-14-020834-8
Notes
References
- ISBN 0-550-16041-8paperback, p. 1435
- ^ Rose Benét, William (1988). The Reader's Encyclopedia (third ed.). London: Guild Publishing (by arrangement with A.C. Black). p. 961.
One of the foremost students of the development of capitalism.
- ISBN 978-1-85986-157-8.
- ISBN 978-0-304-34794-0.
Tawney remained an influential social thinker from the interwar years through to the 1950s.
- ^ Noel W. Thompson. Political economy and the Labour Party: the economics of democratic socialism, 1884-2005. 2nd edition. Oxon, England, UK; New York, New York, US: Routledge, 2006.
- ISBN 978-1-85585-261-7.
- ISBN 978-0-900286-01-8.
Tawney's was undoubtedly the most forceful and authentic voice of Christian socialist prophecy to be raised during the 1920s and 30s, echoing into the 1950s.
- ^ Drabble, M. (ed.) (1987), The Oxford Companion to English Literature, Oxford University Press, Oxford, p. 965
- ^ Elsey, B. (1987) "R. H. Tawney – Patron saint of adult education", in P. Jarvis (ed.) Twentieth Century Thinkers in Adult Education, Croom Helm, Beckenham: Tawney is "the patron saint of adult education"
- ISBN 978-0-19-866176-4.
- ^ Rowse, A. L. (1995), Historians I Have Known, Gerald Duckworth & Co., London, p. 92
- ^ ISBN 0-334-02496-Xpaperback, p. 184
- required.)
- ^ a b Thane, P. (2001) p. 377
- ISBN 0-00-710064-7.
- ^ Dale, G. (2000) p. 95
- ^ Ormrod, D. (1990) p. 10
- ^ Dale, G. (2000) p. 91
- ISBN 978-0-349-10809-4.
- ^ a b c d Magnusson, M. (1996) p. 1435
- ^ Dale, G. (2000) p. 93
- ^ Hastings, A. (1991), p. 178
- ^ a b Hastings, A. (1991) p. 183
- ^ William Rose Benét (1988) p. 961
- doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/36425. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ^ Drabble, M. (1987) p. 996
- ^ a b c Nicholls, C.S. (1996) p. 836
- ^ Tawney, R. H. (1977). Religion & the Rise of Capitalism. Harmondsworth: Pelican (Penguin Books). pp. Inside page.
- ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 20 April 2023.
- ^ Rose Benét, W. (1988) p. 961
- ^ a b c d Cannon, J. (1997) p. 909
- ISBN 978-0-333-66945-7.
- ^ Foote, G. (1997) p. 76
- ^ Ormrod, D. (1990) p. 9
- ^ Foote, G. (1997) p. 72
- ^ Ramsden, J. (2005) p. 633
- ^ a b Thane, P. (2001) p. 378
- ^ Dale, G. (2000) p. 91
- ^ Craig, F.W.S., British Parliamentary Election Results, 1919-1949 (1969), pp. 224, 258, 498.
- ^ Dale, G. (2000) p. 90
- ^ Ramsden, J. (2005) p. 580
- ^ Foote, G. (1997) p. 80
- ^ Tom Steele, and Richard Taylor. "R.H. Tawney and the Reform of the Universities." History of Education 37.1 (2008): 1-22.
- ^ Steele and Taylor. "R.H. Tawney and the Reform of the Universities." 19-22.
- ^ Ramsden, John, ed. (2005). Oxford Companion to Twentieth Century British Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 634.
- ^ Goldman, Lawrence, and Andrew D. Roberts. "Tawney and dogs." Times Literary Supplement, no. 5784, 7 Feb. 2014, p. 6.
Further reading
- Armstrong, Gary, and Tim Gray. The Authentic Tawney: A New Interpretation of the Political Thought of R.H. Tawney (Andrews UK Limited, 2016).
- Bird, Colin. "Tawney, Richard Henry" in The Encyclopedia of Political Thought (2015). online
- MacIntyre, Alasdair. ""The Socialism of R. H. Tawney" New York Review (30 July 1964) online
- Marsden, John. "Richard Tawney: Moral Theology and the Social Order." Political Theology 7.2 (2006): 181–199.
- Martin, David A. "R.H. Tawney as political economist." Journal of Economic Issues 16.2 (1982): 535–543.
- Steele, Tom, and Richard Taylor. "R.H. Tawney and the Reform of the Universities." History of Education 37.1 (2008): 1-22.
- Terrill, Ross. R.H. Tawney and his times: Socialism as fellowship (Harvard UP, 1973).
- Wright, Anthony. R.H. Tawney (Manchester UP, 1987).
External links
- Extensive biography
- Works by R. H. Tawney in eBook form at Standard Ebooks
- Works by R. H. Tawney at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about R. H. Tawney at Internet Archive
- Tawney's Essays introducing the 1923 edition of A Discourse Upon Usurye by Thomas Wilson
- Catalogue of the Tawney papers at the Archives Division Archived 18 June 2007 at the Wayback Machine of the London School of Economics
- Account of the Somme in The Westminster Gazette
- R. H. Tawney, On Property (1921)