Dear Rob,

It would help if you could give a thumbnail account of where Finlay and Braudel went wrong, and what was at stake. 

Avner 

============================================================================
From Avner Offer, Chichele Professor Emeritus of Economic History, University of Oxford
         All Souls College, High St., Oxford OX1 4AL, tel. +44 (0)7551960880
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  Recently published:
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   (Princeton University Press, 2016).  http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10841.html
  -Burn Mark: A Photographic Memoir of the Six Day War (Lintel Press, 2014). See www.avneroffer.net
________________________________________
From: Societies for the History of Economics [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Rob Tye [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 20 June 2017 09:48
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [SHOE] LSE series of reprints of scarce works on political economy

Dear Mason, and Erik

With hindsight, I see the regrettable fundamental shift in general attitudes
over the course of the 20th century as away from a whiggish, scientific and
objective notion of truth championed by say Russell and Wells (somewhat via
LSE)  in 1900, to a more relativistic, historicist and merely social notion
of truth indicated by such as Foucault, Giddens or McCloskey in 2000.  I
would argue that politically motivated funding of research played a
troubling and significant role in that shift.  However, I certainly agree
with Sheamur and Dimand that we need to follow the facts where they lead,
and despite all that Rockefeller funding, for me they lead most importantly
not to LSE, but rather to the convergence of Paris and New York during WWII.

I will outline my own narrative, in the hope of getting criticism, or
assisting others with particular references.

Back in the 1980’s I saw two huge but completely separate problems in
monetary history.  At Cambridge, Finley was undermining a correct
understanding of Ancient European Monetary history.  He was diverting
attention away from political-economic motives by exaggerating the extent of
economic ignorance in ancient times.  In Paris, Brauadel was undermining a
correct understanding of Medieval European Monetary history by exaggerating
the influence of the fluctuating fecundity of mining operations.  Over the
next three decades I came to the conclusion that these two very influential
errors were in fact intimately associated via agencies outside academia.
The facts that guided me are these, in roughly the order in which I
unearthed them

1)  Andrew Murray Watson at Toronto launched an acute criticism of the
Braudelian bullionist position  (EHR 1967).   I wrote to Watson in the
1990’s to ask why he never followed up on that work on monetary history.  He
explained that immediately upon publication, and apparently unexpectedly, he
was given a Ford Foundation award to work on the history of agriculture
instead.  It was that which, rightly or wrongly, set me thinking

2) From there I found:  Francis X. Sutton, "The Ford Foundation's
Trans-Atlantic Roles and Purposes” written by a one time Ford Foundation
employee, a man charged with negotiating very significant funds towards
Braudel, and clearly stating his understanding that these were primarily
associated with the political influence of Braudel’s work, rather than its
academic content.  Part of that grant award (one million dollars in the
1970’s as I recall) required collaboration concerning the associated
syllabus with Paul Lazarsfeld

3)  Meanwhile I researched Finley, and discovered that, as Erik Thomson
suggests – he was an enormously erudite fellow, having already gained
degrees in three different subjects at the age of 21.  Such was his natural
ability, that it seemed to me that as a young man he chose to try to ‘change
history rather than study it’, taking a position as a propagandist for
political views concerning academic matters, alongside Boas.  (That work
seems to have created the basis of the model for the later and very well
know Ford Foundation CCF project).   He also became closely involved with
Paul Lazarsfeld at Columbia, a mentor who provided his job references,
including one working for Karl Polanyi, funded by the Ford foundation.  Much
of this information comes from the Tompkins biographies, but I found in
correspondence that Tompkins was resistant to the adoption of additional
sources I had to offer which to me suggests a popularist mask concealed
Finley’s rather cynical and manipulative personality

4)  The paper about Lazarsfeld “Clientelism and the University: was Columbia
Sociology a machine?” by Terry Nichols Clark is not as useful as it
initially sounds concerning substantive matters, but it gives a vivid first
hand account of “PFL's flagrant Machiavellianism” which reinforced my
conclusions concerning his close associate Finley.  I judge the
extraordinary contemporary piece “The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity” by
eminent monetary historian Cipolla gives an addition window into the levels
of cynicism operating within exactly such branches of academia back in those
days

So things I saw as disconnected and errors as a young man, in maturity,
appear to me connected, and intentional misrepresentations.  We have no
window into men’s hearts of course, but I could not comfortably inhabit my
own skin if I professed otherwise.

Rob Tye