John Kells Ingram

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For the 16th century English Catholic martyr, see John Ingram.

John Kells Ingram (7 July 1823 – 1 May 1907) was an Irish poet, patriot and scholar, as well as an economist and historian of economic thought.

Ingram was born in Templecarne near Pettigo, County Donegal, of Scottish Presbyterian stock. At the age of 14, in 1837, he entered Trinity College, Dublin, and had a distinguished career there as a student, fellow and professor, successively of oratory, English Literature, and Greek, subsequently becoming the College Librarian and ultimately its Vice Provost. In his later career he became interested in the nascent disciplines of sociology and economics; in his 1888 History of Political Economy he used the term "economic man" as a critical description of the human being as conceived by economic theory, and he may have coined the term.

In 1843, Ingram wrote the poem for which he is best remembered, a ballad called "The Memory of the Dead", in honour of the Irish Rebellion of 1798 led by the United Irishmen. He was an advocate of Home Rule for Ireland, though within the context of a more general devolution within the United Kingdom.

Ingram was one of the scholars selected to write entries for two of the most famous editions of the Encyclopedia Britannica, namely the "scholars" or the ninth edition and the eleventh edition. According to his biographer S.D. Barrett, "Between 1882 and 1888 he wrote the entries in Encyclopedia Britannica on Pierre Leroux, Cliffe Leslie, John McCulloch, Georg Ludwig von Maurer, William Petty, Francois Quesnay, Karl Rau, David Ricardo, Jean Baptiste Say, Adam Smith, Jacques Turgot, and Arthur Young. He also wrote the entries on sumptuary laws and slavery. From 1891 to 1896 Ingram wrote the entries in Palgrave's Dictionary of Economics on Cliffe Leslie, Friedrich List, and Karl Marx.

He also wrote on labour and trade issues, and connects these two issues to the issue of slavery, including domestic slavery in Europe from ancient times onward. His book, A History of Slavery and Serfdom was based on his entry on slavery cited above. His entry on slavery began with French political economist and journalist Charles Dunoyer's view that "the economic regime of every society which has recently become sedentary is founded on the slavery of the industrial professions". Ingram, a follower of Auguste Comte, states that Auguste Comte and Hume provided the best philosophy of slavery. "The largest and most philosophical views on slavery generally will be found in Hume’s Essay "On the populousness of Antient Nations," and in Conte’s Philisophie Positive, vol. v., and Politique Positive, vol. iii", Ingram wrote in the ninth. He also stated therein that "For the economic effects, when it is regarded as an organization of labour, reference may be had to Smith’s Wealth of Nations, book iii. Chap. 2, J. S. Mill’s Political Economy, book ii. Chap. 5. and J. E. Cairnes’ Slave Power, chap 2. (J. K. I.)" [1]In 1998 the influence of positivism and Auguste Comte is discussed in an economic paper prepared at Trinity College to commemorate the bicentennial anniversary of the "Memory of the Dead" which again Ingram authored[2].

John Kells Ingram's influence on economics is depicted by Johns Hopkins University and University of Wisconsin economist Richard Ely as follows: "A more humane and genial spirit has taken the place of the old dryness and hardness which once repelled so many of the best minds from the study of Economics and won for it the name of 'the dismal science'. In particular, the problem of the Proletariat, of the condition and future of the working classes- has taken a powerful hold on the feelings, as well as the intellect, of Society, and is studied in a more earnest and sympathetic spirit than at any former time." (ibid;xix). Ingram also cites earlier than many WEB DuBois' Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States in his bibliography of the major works on slavery between the eighteenth and early twentieth century in his entries on slavery in the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Ingram died in Dublin and is buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery.

[edit] Major publications

[edit] References

  1. ^ John Kells Ingram, "Slavery: Bibliography - Slavery and the Slave Trade", Encyclopedia Britannica (1902)
  2. ^ Sean D. Barrett, "John Kells Ingram (1823-1907)", Trinity Economic Paper Series: Paper No. 99/9

[edit] External links