UMBERTO MEOLI

Maverick economic historian who eschewed Marxist theory in favour of British pragmatism ALTHOUGH he always thought of him - self as a man of the Left, the historian and economist Umberto Meoli was a maverick in Italian academic circles in that, as a great Anglophile, he early be - came convinced of the unacceptable limitations of Marxist economic theory. His writings exhibited an ever-growing respect for British pragmatism and the economic liberalism of Adam Smith, Ricardo and Alfred Marshall. Umberto Meoli was one of 19 broth - ers ; his father was a pharmacist from a small town near Benevento, his mother was from Padua. From 1940 he served in the Italian Army and with the Resist - ance after the armistice. This resulted in his being imprisoned for several months in the notorious detention cen - tre of the Palazzo Giusti during Musso - lini ' s puppet Government Meoli was briefly a Communist, and after graduating he worked for a time in the Camera del Lavoro in Vicenza, but he was soon at odds with the rigid militancy of organised labour. He found his vocation in the late 1950s when he

obtained a teaching post at the Univer - sity of Parma. He became professor of the history of economic thought there in 1970 and shortly afterwards was invited to occupy a similar chair at Venice. He was much influenced by Harry Johnson, making a special journey to England to meet him, and became a close friend of Philip Andrews, then teaching at Nuffield College, Oxford, and Elizabeth Brunner, with whom he shared an admiration for Marshall and a more sceptical view of Keynes. In 1961 Meoli married an English^ woman, Rachel Toulmin, a lecturer at Padua University and the younger sister of Stephen Toulmin,...