Richard H. Tawney

R. H. TAWNEY, English economist, was born in Calcutta, India, in 1880. He was educated at Rugby, and at Balliol College, Oxford. Shortly after leaving Oxford, he became a teacher of the classes for adult workers organized by the Workers Educational Association, of which he was president for sixteen years, and is now vice-president. From 1906 to 1908 he was an assistant in economics at Glasgow University, then for six years he was a teacher for tutorial classes of the Committee of Oxford University. He held a Chair of Economic History at the London School of Economics. Tawney was a member of the British Labour Party since 1906, and served on various public bodies, including the Coal Commission (1919), the Consultative Committee of the Board of Education (1913-1931), and the University Grants Committee (1943-1946). In 1942 he spent several months in Washington as economic and sociological adviser to the British Embassy. Tawney's three best-known books. Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, The Acquisitive Society, and Equality, gained for him an international reputation. Among his other books are: The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century; Land and Labour in China; and English Economic History. He died on 16th January 1962 at the age of 81.