Contents and Arrangement Expanded View
Online

Collection Overview

Creator:
Lewis, W. Arthur (William Arthur), 1915-1991
Title:
W. Arthur Lewis Papers
Repository:
Public Policy Papers
Permanent URL:
http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/pn89d659s
Dates:
1892-1990 (mostly 1950-1990)
Size:
55 boxes
Storage Note:
  • Mudd Manuscript Library (scamudd): Box 1-55
Language:
English

Abstract

Sir W. Arthur Lewis (1915-1991) was a pioneer in the field of economic development and a leading authority on economic growth in developing countries and associated political and social changes. He was a professor at the University of Manchester and Princeton University and served as an advisor to several governments. Lewis, who was from the Caribbean, also broke through racial barriers in the academic world throughout his career. Lewis's papers document his career as a scholar and as an economic advisor and include his professional correspondence, meeting minutes, reports, and writings.

Collection Description & Creator Information

Scope and Contents

Lewis's papers document his career as a scholar and as an economic advisor and include his professional correspondence, meeting minutes, reports, and writings. His scholarly papers include materials documenting his administrative work at the University of the West Indies and his lecture notes from his professorship at Princeton University. His advisory papers include correspondence, meeting minutes, and reports, predominantly from his work in Ghana and the Caribbean.

Please see the series descriptions in the contents list for additional information about individual series.

Arrangement

The Papers have been arranged in seven series:

Collection Creator Biography:

Lewis, W. Arthur (William Arthur), 1915-1991

Sir W. Arthur Lewis (1915-1991) was a pioneer in the field of economic development and a leading authority on economic growth in developing countries and associated political and social changes. He was a professor at the University of Manchester and Princeton University and served as an advisor to several governments. Lewis, who was from the Caribbean, also broke through racial barriers in the academic world throughout his career.

William Arthur Lewis was born on January 23, 1915 on the island of St. Lucia, in the Caribbean. He was the fourth of five sons born to George F. and Ida (Barton) Lewis. Both of his parents were school teachers who had immigrated to St. Lucia from Antigua. Lewis married Gladys I. Jacobs, from Grenada, in 1947. They had two daughters, Elizabeth and Barbara.

Lewis won the highly competitive St. Lucia Government Scholarship in 1932, which permitted him to attend any British university. He wished to become an engineer, but knew discrimination would prevent him from finding employment. Instead, he enrolled in the Bachelor of Commerce degree program in 1933 at the London School of Economics, with the intention of returning to St. Lucia and obtaining employment in the municipal service or private trade. A portion of the degree coursework included economics classes, in which he excelled. When he graduated with his B.Com degree in 1937, the London School of Economics awarded him a scholarship to study for a Ph.D. in economics, which he received in 1940. He was appointed to a one-year teaching assistantship in 1938. In 1939, he became an assistant lecturer, a position he held until 1948. He was the first black faculty member at the school.

At the London School of Economics, Lewis's mentor was Professor Sir Arnold Plant, a specialist in British industry. As a consequence, the first phase of Lewis's research career concentrated on industrial development, an area in which he continued teaching and writing until he left the London School of Economics. In 1945, the Acting Chairman of the Economics Department, Frederick Hayek, asked Lewis to develop a course on the economy between the two world wars. As a consequence, Lewis also began to change his research interests from industrial development to the study of the history of the world economy from the middle of the nineteenth century. While at the London School of Economics, Lewis also became involved in service to the British government. He was Principal of the Board of Trade in 1943, advised the British Colonial Office on economic issues in 1944, and was a member of the Colonial Economic Advisory Council from 1945 to 1949.

Lewis moved to the University of Manchester in 1948, accepting the position of the Stanley Jevons Professor of Political Economy and becoming the first black professor at a British university. He remained there until 1958. While at Manchester, Lewis developed his expertise in economic development, which stemmed from his views on British colonialism. Lewis began teaching economic development regularly after 1950, in part due to the demand from the large number of students from developing countries who wanted to learn about the economies of their nations. For the rest of his career, Lewis focused on the study of economic development and continued to study the history of the world economy.

While at the University of Manchester, Lewis undertook the majority of his overseas consulting projects. His first was in 1949, as an economic consultant to the Caribbean Commission to study land settlement in British Guiana and industrial development in Puerto Rico and the British West Indies. From 1950 to 1952, Lewis was director of the Colonial Development Corporation in the United Kingdom, and from 1951 to 1952 he was on the Departmental Committee on Fuel and Power, also in the United Kingdom. In 1951, Lewis was a member of the United Nations Group of Experts on Under-Developed Countries. He was a consultant for the United Nations Economic Commission for Asia and Far East in 1955, and Deputy Managing Director of the United Nations Special Fund from 1959 to 1960.

Lewis also traveled to Africa on several occasions during this time. He was a consultant to the Gold Coast in 1953, reporting on industrialization and the Volta River Dam Project, and also served as a consultant to the Western Nigeria government in 1955. He returned to Ghana (formerly the Gold Coast) after the country became independent, serving as economic adviser to the Prime Minister of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, from 1957 to 1958, under the auspices of the United Nations. Lewis's role was to conduct a review of Ghana's economic and financial policies and to provide advice to government officials.

In 1959, Lewis left Ghana and the University of Manchester to become the Principal of the University College of the West Indies, located in Jamaica, which was then affiliated with the University of London. In 1962, the university became an independent entity and was renamed the University of the West Indies. At that time, Lewis became the Vice-Chancellor of the university, a position he held until 1963. During his term, he widened the contacts between the community and the university, broadened the base of undergraduate recruitment, introduced new programs, and increased the number of students at the university.

Lewis also served as the Special Adviser to the Prime Minister of the West Indies from 1961 to 1962. During 1962, he took a brief leave of absence from the University of the West Indies to focus his efforts on preserving the Federation of the West Indies, which he believed was critical for maintaining meaningful political independence and economic growth in the West Indies. Despite his work, the Federation was dissolved that year. Lewis was also the Director of the Central Bank of Jamaica from 1961 to 1962, and the Director of the Industrial Development Corporation in Jamaica from 1962 to 1963.

Lewis returned to academia in 1963 as a professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton University, with a joint appointment in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the Economics Department. Lewis was the James Madison Professor of Political Economy from 1968 to 1982 and the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of Economics and International Affairs from 1982 to 1983, when he retired and became professor emeritus. While at Princeton, Lewis taught undergraduate and graduate courses in economic development and modern economic history. He was also the first director, in 1967, of Princeton's interdisciplinary Research Program in Economic Development at the Woodrow Wilson School. During his career at Princeton, Lewis only took one leave of absence, to serve as a founder and the first president of the Caribbean Development Bank from 1970 to 1973. He also served as Chancellor of the University of Guyana from 1967 to 1973. It was an honorary position, for which he presided over the Council of the University and awarded degrees to graduates.

Lewis was a prolific author, publishing twelve books and more than eighty monographs and articles. His important works include "Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labour," ( Manchester Studies, 1954) and Theory of Economic Growth (1955), one of the first academic works written about economic development and considered a classic in its field. His other important works include Principles of Economic Planning (1949), Economic Survey, 1918-1939 (1949), Overhead Costs (1950), Development Planning (1966), Politics in West Africa (1966), Tropical Development, 1880-1913 (1971), and Growth and Fluctuations, 1870-1913 (1978).

Lewis held leadership positions in a number of professional associations. He was president of the Manchester Statistical Society in 1956 and president of the Economic Society of Ghana in 1958. In the American Economic Association, Lewis was vice-president in 1965, elected Distinguished Fellow in 1969, and president in 1983. He was a member, fellow, or honorary fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Geographical Society, American Philosophical Society, British Academy, Council of the Royal Economic Society, London School of Economics and Political Science, and the Weizmann Institute. Lewis received honorary degrees from more than thirty institutions world-wide and was made a Knight Bachelor in 1963 by Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain for his service at the University of the West Indies. In 1979, Lewis was the co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economic Science, sharing the prize with Theodore W. Schultz of the University of Chicago. They were honored for their pioneering research into economic development, especially with regards to the problems of developing countries. Lewis was the first person of African descent to win the Nobel Prize for a field other than the Nobel Peace Prize.

Sir W. Arthur Lewis passed away in 1991 at his home in Barbados, at the age of 76.

Collection History

Acquisition:

This collection was donated by Gladys Lewis, the wife of W. Arthur Lewis, in June 1992 , with an addition in November 1992 .

Appraisal

The materials separated from this collection include proceedings and papers from the Princeton Income Distribution Conference in 1973 and 1974, papers by other scholars, duplicate materials, and personal information about Lewis, his students, and job candidates. Publications have been removed from this collection to be cataloged separately.

Sponsorship:

These papers were processed with the generous support of the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, the John Foster and Janet Avery Dulles Fund, and the University Research Council.

Processing Information

This collection was processed by Adriane Hanson and Melina Meneguin-Layerenza in 2006. Finding aid written by Adriane Hanson in November 2006.

Access & Use

Conditions Governing Access

Collection is open for research use.

Conditions Governing Use

Single copies may be made for research purposes. To cite or publish quotations that fall within Fair Use, as defined under U. S. Copyright Law, no permission is required. For instances beyond Fair Use, it is the responsibility of the researcher to determine whether any permissions related to copyright, privacy, publicity, or any other rights are necessary for their intended use of the Library's materials, and to obtain all required permissions from any existing rights holders, if they have not already done so. Princeton University Library's Special Collections does not charge any permission or use fees for the publication of images of materials from our collections, nor does it require researchers to obtain its permission for said use. The department does request that its collections be properly cited and images credited. More detailed information can be found on the Copyright, Credit and Citations Guidelines page on our website. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us through the Ask Us! form.

Physical Characteristics and Technical Requirements

For preservation reasons, original analog and digital media may not be read or played back in the reading room. Users may visually inspect physical media but may not remove it from its enclosure. All analog audiovisual media must be digitized to preservation-quality standards prior to use. Audiovisual digitization requests are processed by an approved third-party vendor. Please note, the transfer time required can be as little as several weeks to as long as several months and there may be financial costs associated with the process. Requests should be directed through the Ask Us Form.

Three audiocassette tapes, one VHS tape, and three U-Matic tapes are located in Series 7: Audiovisual Materials, Box 55.

Credit this material:

W. Arthur Lewis Papers; Public Policy Papers, Department of Special Collections, Princeton University Library

Permanent URL:
http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/pn89d659s
Location:
Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library
65 Olden Street
Princeton, NJ 08540, USA
(609) 258-6345
Storage Note:
  • Mudd Manuscript Library (scamudd): Box 1-55

Find More

Related Materials

This collection is part of a group of 28 Mudd Manuscript Library collections related to 20th century economic thought and development which were processed as part of a National Historical Publications and Records Commission funded project. Researchers wishing to access these collections should search for the subject "Economics--20th century" or related terms in the Princeton University Library Main Catalog. A collection at the Mudd Manuscript Library of particular relevance to the Lewis Papers is the papers of Albert O. Hirschman, an expert in economic development.

Bibliography

The W. Arthur Lewis Papers have been included in UNESCO's Memory of the World Registry.

The following sources were consulted during the preparation of the biographical note: Materials from the W. Arthur Lewis Papers; Public Policy Papers, Special Collections, Princeton University Library. "The W. Arthur Lewis Papers" by Robert L. Tignor. Princeton University Library Chronicle (vol LXVII, no. 1), Autumn 2005. "Sir W. Arthur Lewis, 76, Is Dead; Winner of Nobel Economics Prize," by Nick Ravo. The New York Times, June 17, 1991.

Subject Terms:
Economic development.
Economic history.
Economics -- 20th century.
Economics -- Study and teaching.
Economists.
Government consultants.
International trade -- History.
Genre Terms:
Correspondence
Reports.
Writings.
Names:
Caribbean Development Bank
American economic association
World Bank.
United Nations
University of the West Indies
Princeton University
Lewis, W. Arthur (William Arthur), 1915-1991
Places:
Developing countries -- Economic conditions -- 20th century.
Ghana -- Economic conditions -- 20th century.
West Indies -- Economic conditions -- 20th century.
West Indies (Federation)