“William James Ashley (1860–1927) was one of a group of economists (including, among others, William Cunningham, H. S. Foxwell, and W. A. S. Hewins) who at the turn of this century constituted the English school of economic history, the school which had been given its form in the 1870s and 1880s by Thorold Rogers and Arnold Toynbee. Ashley, alone of this group, also had ties with the German school of historical economists, which under the leadership of Gustav Schmoller had, from the 1870s on, posited a historical, statistical, and inductive method against the abstract, deductive method of the classical school of Ricardo.”
More can be found in the entry written by Bernard Semmel in the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (1969).
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ASHLEY, William James, 1860-
Born in London, Eng., 1860; educated at Balliol College, Oxford; Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford; Lecturer in Modern History in Lincoln and Corpus Christi Colleges; Professor of Political Economy and of Constitutional History in the University of Toronto, Canada; Professor of Economic History at Harvard; Corresponding member of the Royal Historical Society (England); author of “Introduction to English Economic History and Theory.”
WILLIAM JAMES ASHLEY, A.M., Professor of Economic History at Harvard since 1892, is the son of James and Jane (Short) Ashley, and was born in London, England, February 25, 1860. His early education was obtained at St. Olave’s Grammar School, Southwark, London; and his collegiate training as a Scholar of Balliol College, Oxford, where he received the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1881, (obtaining the Lothian Prize in the next year), and the degree of Master of Arts in 1885. For the three years preceding 1888 he was a Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, and Lecturer in Modern History in Lincoln and Corpus Christi Colleges. From then until 1892 he was a Professor of Political Economy and Constitutional History in the University of Toronto, Canada. The last named year he was appointed Professor of Economic History at Harvard. Mr. Ashley is a Corresponding Member of the Royal Historical Society (England). As a writer as well as an Instructor he has won pronounced recognition. His chief work is An Introduction to English Economic History and Theory, of which the first volume was published in 1888 [Part I. The Middle Ages: first edition, 1888; second edition, 1892; third edition, 1894; fourth edition, 1909] and the second in 1893 [Part II. The End of the Middle Ages: first edition, 1888; second edition, 1893; fourth edition, 1906], several editions being put to press, and the book appearing both in England and America, as well as being translated into German and French. Various articles have also appeared from his pen in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, in the Political Science Quarterly, in the Economic Journal, in the Economic Review and in the English Historical Review. He married, on July 2, 1888, Annie Margaret, daughter of George Binkbeck Hill, D.C.L., the Editor of Boswell, and has three children: Annie, Alice Mary and Walter Ashley.
Source: University and their Sons. History, Influence and Characteristics of American Universities with Biographical Sketches and Portraits of Alumni and Recipients of Honorary Degrees. Editor-in-chief, General Joshua L. Chamberlain, LL.D. Vol II (1899), p. 595.