Umberto Meoli

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Umberto Meoli (August 26, 1920 – May 17, 2002)[1] was an Italian historian of economics in Padua, Italy and was known as a maverick who eschewed Marxism in favour of British pragmatism.

The early years

Umberto Meoli, born August 26, 1920, was one of nineteen brothers; his father was a pharmacist from a small town near Benevento and his mother was from Padua, Italy.

In 1940, at age 20, Meoli began his service in the Italian Army fighting in World War II, and, three years later, with the Resistance after the 1943 armistice between Italy and the Allied armed forces. As a result, Meoli was imprisoned by the Benito Mussolini Fascist government, and spent several months in the Palazzo Giusti detention center in Padua.[2]

The Palazzo Giusti detention center was notorious for the cruelty of some Fascists in Padua during the Italian Social Republic. For example, Giovanni Gonelli, a barely literate jail keeper at Palazzo Giusti in Padua and a member of the Banda Carità, apparently enjoyed dehumanizing his prisoners by refusing their requests for food or blankets. The sentence of the Appellate Court of January 8, 1946 states that Gonelli would tell prisoners who asked for water to "piss and drink."[3] There is no doubt that Meoli experienced such cruelty while imprisoned in Palazzo Giusti and that this cruelty affected his thoughts.

Academia

Meoli was briefly a Communist, and after graduating, he worked for a time in the ttade unions (Camera del Lavoro) in Vicenza, but he was soon at odds with the rigid militancy of organized labor. He found his vocation in the late 1950s, when he obtained a teaching post at the University of Parma.

It was during his time at Camera del Lavoro that Meoli became influenced by the Canadian Harry Gordon Johnson, one of the most active and prolific economists of all time.</ref>Gordon's main research was in the area of international trade, international finance, and monetary policy. [8]</ref> In 1961, Meoli made a special journey to the University of Manchester in England to meet Johnson. He quickly became a close friend of both Philip Andrews, [4], and Elizabeth Brunner,[5] with whom Meoli shared an admiration for Alfred Marshall and a more skeptical view of John Maynard Keynes.

In 1961 Meoli married Rachel Toulmin, an Englishwoman and lecturer at Padua University. Rachel Toulmin was the younger sister of Dr. Stephen E. Toulmin, a historian and philosopher of science.[6] Also in 1961, Meoli published his first book. A steady flow of books and articles followed in which Meoli concentrated increasingly on the history of economic thought and ideas. It was a topic for which his humanity, wide reading, pragmatism, and distaste for dogma particularly suited him.

By 1970, Meoli became Professor of the History of Economic Thought at Camera del Lavoro and shortly afterwards was invited to occupy a similar chair at the University of Venice.

Italian academic circles

In addition to his chair positions, from 1992 - 1998 Umberto Meoli was president of the Italian Association for the History of Economic Thought (AISPE).[7] Meoli always thought of himself as a man of the Left. However, he early became convinced of the unacceptable limitations of Marxist economic theory and his books and articles struck many of his leftist colleagues as a kind of apostasy. Meoli's writings exhibited an ever-growing respect for British pragmatism and the economic liberalism of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Alfred Marshall. For example, the figure of Gustav von Schmoller has been outstanding by authors like Francesco Traniello[8] who has indicated the importance that Schmoller, like Gustav von Schönberg, [9] Adolph Wagner and Albert Schäffle, among others, gave the ethical element of the political Economy, whereas Umberto Meoli associates the figure of Schmoller to those of Lujo Brentano and Karl Bücher like the most representative authors of the development of the Economic Historiography.[10] Eventually seen in Italian academic circles as a maverick and a great Anglophile, Meoli's leftist friends tolerated the irony, largely because the likable Meoli would comment on their dismay with sudden eruptions of laughter. [11]


References

  1. ^ Times (UK). Umberto Meoli; Obituary ;The Register. Times Newspapers Ltd, May 31, 2002.
  2. ^ Times (UK). Umberto Meoli; Obituary ;The Register. Times Newspapers Ltd, May 31, 2002.
  3. ^ Lauer, A. Robet (March 2002). CLCWeb Library of Research and Information. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture: A WWWeb Journal. ISSN 1481-4374
  4. ^ A former President of the Royal Economic Society[1]), Andrews was senior researcher at Nuffield College at the time[2] [3] [4]
  5. ^ Elizabeth Brunner (1932-1970) was a Professor of Economics. See [link] and [link].
  6. ^ Dr. Stephen Toulmin, Henry R. Luce Professor of Multiethnic and Transnational Studies at the University of Southern California, received the federal government's highest prize for intellectual achievement in the humanities when he was selected to deliver the National Endowment for the Humanities' (NEH) 26th annual Jefferson Lecture. [5] "The great theme running through Stephen Toulmin's work," according to former NEH chairman Sheldon Hackney, "is that the humanities - history, philosophy and literature - are a necessary companion of the scientific impulse in our thinking."[6]
  7. ^ L'Associazione Italiana per la Storia del Pensiero Economico (AISPE)[7]
  8. ^ Francesco Traniello is a professor of Political Science at the University of the Studies of Turin. See [link].
  9. ^ Gustav (Friedrich) von Schönberg, jurist, economist (Nationalökonom), born 21 July, 1839 Stettin (Pommern), - 3 January, 1908, Tübingen see User talk:Sheynhertz-Unbayg/Contribution List/memo/S
  10. ^ Gomez Rojo, María E. Denis, Henri, (1999). [| Histoire de la pensée économique ] (translated: Magazine of historical-legal studies). Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1999, 725 págs. . Rev. estud. hist.-juríd.. [online]. 2000, no.22 [cited 20 October 2006], p.582-586. Available from [| World Wide Web]. ISSN 0716-5455
  11. ^ Times (UK). Umberto Meoli; Obituary ;The Register. Times Newspapers Ltd, May 31, 2002.

Other

  • Meoli, Umberto, (1991). Lineamenti di storia delle idee economiche (translated: Lineamenti of history of the economic ideas) (Unknown Binding). Publisher: UTET Libreria .538 pages. ISBN 8-877500-18-2
  • Bianchini, Mark. Ricordi di Umberto Meoli (Memory of Umberto Meoli) (1920-2002).

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