Introduction
James Edwin Thorold Rogers, known as Thorold Rogers, was a member of the English Historical School of Economics, historian and politician who was closely associated with Oxford, first as an undergraduate and then as the holder on two separate occasions of the prestigious Drummond Professorship of Political Economy.
His most important work was the multi-volume A History of Agriculture and Prices in England (hereafter A History), which appeared between 1866 and 1902. Rogers' reputation rests on the painstaking research carried out over many decades contained in these volumes. Despite the achievement represented by A History, Rogers did not attain the recognition he may have perhaps deserved in his lifetime or subsequently. Various reasons can be identified which help to explain why this was the case, among them Rogers' fiery character, his tendency of belittling the work of other economists, and his failure to make any significant contributions to economic theory. Section 2 of this chapter outlines Rogers' life and career. Section 3 provides an account of A History and, as part of this, Rogers' theory of rent. Section 4 looks at some other aspects of Rogers' work as an economist and his often-hostile views on the workings of Oxford University. Section 5 concludes.R. A. Cord (*)
Researcher in Economics, London, UK
e-mail: robert_cord@cantab.net
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R. A. Cord (ed.), The Palgrave Companion to Oxford Economics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58471-9_10
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