North D
North, Sir Dudley
ACHIEVEMENTS:
Anticipated laissez faire economics
NICKNAME/ALIAS:
None
DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH:
16 May 1641, London, England
DATE AND PLACE OF DEATH AND AGE AT DEATH:
31 December 1691, London, England. Aged 50
DISCIPLINE:
Civil servant and economist
FIELD:
Economy
LANGUAGE:
English
PARENTS:
Father: Sir Dudley North
Mother: Anne Montagu
SIBLINGS:
9
SPOUSE:
Ann Gunning
CHILDREN:
2 sons
EDUCATION:
Schools in Bury St Edmunds and London
MAJOR WORK:
"Discourses Upon Trade " (1691 or 1692)
LIFE AND TIMES:
When he was twenty North was sent off on a ship and on the return journey he left the ship at Izmir and set up business there as an agent for his employer. He returned briefly to England to get new business contacts and then went back to Izmir where he became one of the leading European merchants in the Middle East.
After almost twenty years, he returned to England in 1680, having made his fortune. He
immediately took a place as a prominent member of the London business community and
was appointed one of the sheriffs of the city by Charles II*. He received a knighthood and made a marriage which much increased his already large
fortune.
In 1683 he held posts in the customs and the treasury, in both of which he carried out administrative reforms. Under James II he kept his job at Customs and Excise and became a Member of Parliament.
After 1688, when the Catholic Stuart monarchy was replaced by the Protestant King William of Orange, North unlike many of his fellow Tories who were perceived as pro-Catholic stayed in London. He did not hold an official position and concentrated on his lucrative trading ventures.
His vast experience underpinned his treatise "Discourses Upon Trade: Principally Directed to the Case of the Interest, Coynage, Clipping, Increase of Money". It was published anonymously either in the year of North's death or the following year and attracted very little attention at that time.
Although North was no academic he used deduction and induction brilliantly in a way which turned his thoughts on a specific contemporary problem into an objective statement on economic theory. A preface to the discourse was added by North's brother, Roger, who drew an analogy between him and the French philosopher Descartes*.
Although scholars have disputed the extent of Descartes's influence, North's methodology does show an analytic approach and an interest in structural mechanisms. The empiricism of Francis Bacon*, with whom North often talked about trade, was probably a stronger influence.
The subject of trade and money supply was much discussed by theorists and statisticians such as Petty* during the latter half of the seventeenth century as opportunities expanded and the crown looked towards overseas trade to boost income. Some, like the mathematician Collins*, argued for government intervention and for the banning of foreign imports.
North's work, on the other hand, was an exposition of the free-trade theory and overthrew the old idea that trade was the exchange of goods which were surplus to the requirements of the producer. North took a literally global view, stating that 'the whole world as to trade, is but as one nation or people'.
ASSESSMENT: North's statement of free-trade theory anticipated later laisser-faire
political economic theories.
EXTRA CONNECTIONS: None
ONELINER: Sir Dudley North, 17th-century defender of the free market
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Grassby, Eichard, The English Gentleman in Trade, The Life and Works of Sir
Dudley North, 1641-1691, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1994