Marjorie Grice-Hutchinson

Marjorie Grice-Hutchinson (1909 - 2003) was an historian of economics specialised in the Salamanca school and in medieval economic thought. She was a student of Hayek with whom she took her PhD. Her historical research has provided the elements to correct received opinion concerning the development of economic doctrine on three important points::*The Salamanca School formulated the quantity theory of money before Bodin. :*The emergence of liberal capitalism cannot be explained as a consequence of Calvinism as the Jesuits of the Salamanca School already defend economic freedom. :*Classical Greek and Roman economic doctrine has found its way into modern economic thought in Arab translations through the scholars of Al Andalus (Ibn Khaldun) and the Salamanca School.

Marjorie Grice-Hutchinson was born in Eastbourne (England) in on 26 May 1909. She was the daughter of a prominent barrister, and spent her childhood in a number of European cities. Because of this travelling existence she did not relieve formal primary education, but instead learnt to master a number of languages, including Latin, that would later be of great use to her in her academic career.

In 1924 her father acquired country estate in the Spanish province of Málaga. From that time on, they spent their holidays in Spain, visiting the estate ever more frequently. In rural Spain in the 1920s and 1930s, Marjorie helped her father in his various social initiatives: they ran a school and a ensured the much needed medical supplies in the village of Churriana (near Málaga). During the Spanish Civil War her father’s yacht was used to help wanted Republican activists escape to nearby Gibraltar.

In 1941 she went to London to work for the Foreign Office. After that she became Professor at the University of London, first at King's College London, later as Head of the Spanish Department in Birkbeck College. In this period she also studied at the London School of Economics, where she obtained an Honorary Degree, and became acquainted with Hayek.

In 1951 she married Ulrich von Schlippenbach, an agricultural engineer who lived in Málaga, and moved to live permanently in Spain until her death on 12 April 2003.

She received various honours, including the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa in the University of Málaga (1992), and in the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (1993). In 1994 she was made a Distinguished Fellow of the History of Economics Society (1994).

In her last years she dedicated considerable energy to the care for the English Cemetery of Málaga, about which she also wrote and interesting study. The family estate "San Julián", with its splendid tropical botanical gardens, was donated by Marjorie Grice-Hutchison to the University of Málaga, where it currently houses the "Centro de Experimentación Grice-Hutchison".

Major publications

*"The School of Salamanca: Readings in Spanish Monetary Theory, 1544 - 1605", 1952.
*"Málaga Farm", 1956
*"Children of the Vega: Growing up on a farm in Spain", 1963
*"The English Cemetery at Málaga", 1964 (new ed. 1982).
*"Early Economic Thought in Spain, 1177-1740", 1978 (Spanish transl. 1982).
*"The School of Salamanca", presentation for the Mont Pelerin Society, 1979.
*"Las vicisitudes de un economista, Notas sobre la fundación de la primera cátedra de Comercio y Economía Política en Málaga (1818) y sobre el catedrático don Manuel María Gutiérrez", in "Homenaje a Lucas Beltrán", 1982.
*"Los economistas españoles y la Historia del Análisis Económico de Schumpeter", "Papeles de Economía Española", 1983.
*"El Discurso acerca de la moneda de vellón de Pedro de Valencia", en "Aportaciones del pensamiento económico iberoamericano, siglos XVI-XX", 1986.
*"Aproximación al pensamiento económico en Andalucía: de Séneca a finales del siglo XVIII", in "Andalucía en el pensamiento económico", Gumersindo Ruiz (ed.), 1987.
*"Some Spanish Contributions to the Early Activities", "Bulletin of the Royal Society", 1988.
*"Review of Oreste Popescu’s "Estudios en la historia del pensamiento económico latino-americano", "History of Political Economy", 1989.
*"El concepto de la Escuela de Salamanca: sus orígenes y desarrollo", "Revista de Historia Económica", 1989.
*"Aproximación al pensamiento económico en Andalucía: de Séneca a finales del sígio XVIII", 1990.
*"Escolásticos y Arbitristas en tierras de Castilla y León", "Actas del 2º Congreso de Economía de Castilla y León", 1990.
*"Contributions of the School of Salamanca to Monetary Theory as a Result of the Discovery of the New World", in: Casas Pardo, J. (ed.): "Beiträge zur Wirtschafts-und Sozialgeschichte, vol. 51; Economic Effects of the European Expansion, 1492-1824", 1992.
*"Santo Tomás de Aquino en la historia del pensamiento económico", lecture given on the occasion of her receiving the title of Doctor honoris causa at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 1993.
*"Economic thought in Spain. Selected Essays of Marjorie Grice-Hutchinson", edited with an introduction by Laurence Moss and Christopher K. Ryan, 1993.
*"The Concept of the Market in Spanish Economic Thought before 1800", "Temas de Economía y Empresa. Homenaje al Profesor Carlos Monter", 1994.
*"Pensamiento económico popular en la Castilla del siglo XIII", conference presentation, MIT, 1994.
*"Ensayos sobre el pensamiento económico en España", 1995.
*"Martín de Azpílcueta "Comentario resolutorio de cambios" and Luis Ortiz "Memoral del Contador Luis Ortíz a Felipe II", reprint, ed. with E. Lluch and B. Schefold, 1998.
*"En torno a la Escuela de Salamanca", in Fuentes Quintana, E.(ed.) "Economía y Economistas Españoles", 1999.

ee also

*Scholasticism
*Salamanca school

External links

* [http://www.eumed.net/cursecon/economistas/Grice-Hutchinson.htm Web page dedicated to Marjorie Grice-Hutchinson (in Spanish)] at [http://www.eumed.net/ EUMEDNET, an information resource maintained by the University of Málaga] .
* [http://www.eumed.net/cursecon/textos/mghandalucia.htm On-line copy of Marjorie Grice-Hutchinson: "Aproximación al pensamiento económico en Andalucía, de Séneca a finales del siglo XVIII"]