John G. Clapham

John G. Clapham (1873-1946) was a British economic historian. He is most notable for his monumental Economic History of Modern Britain (3 vols., 1926, 1932, 1938). Clapham was a student of Alfred Marshall, who once remarked "Clapham has more analytic faculty than any thorough historian whom I have ever taught." Unlike previous economic historians who had focused mostly on the political and legal frames within which economic activity was conducted, Clapham and his followers embraced a quantitative method. Because of this shift, quantitative method became afterward the preferred approach for economic history.