Dr Michael Palairet

Dr Michael Palairet (known to his colleagues as Henry) was appointed to a lectureship in Economic History following his successful defence  in 1976  of his PhD thesis on the impact of commerce on the structure of the peasant economy of Serbia, 1860-1912. His thesis supervisor was Ian Blanchard, and Ian and Henry were to remain close friends until Ian’s death in 2020. Along with George Hammersley, Ian and Henry would often enjoy a full convivial lunch at what was then the University Staff Club in Chambers Street, before Henry embarked on a long afternoon and evening of teaching and research. Commonly, Henry was to be found in Room 333 of the William Robertson Building in George Square spinning and peering his way through microfiche files as he reconstructed Balkan national income data. 

While his researches painstakingly advanced, Henry’s teaching was concentrated on the 2nd-year course on international Economic History, and, at Honours level, on the European economy in the first half of the 20th century. While his teaching made few concessions to the economically nervous, it was popular and much appreciated by the keener students of the political economy of economic development. The precision which Henry encouraged in his students, he demanded of his colleagues. Exam paper-setting meetings could easily become entangled in deep discussions of the boundaries between farming and agriculture. A degree classification board was once made to wait for 30 minutes while Henry, Ian and Charles Feinstein, later the Chichele Professor of Economic History at Oxford, adjourned to a separate room to thrash out their differing views of Paul Gregory’s estimates of real national income in Russia between 1885 and 1913. Shortly after his appointment to the department, when defending the cause of one of his students, Henry locked horns with Berrick Saul over a degree class classification. When Berrick ruled against him, Henry flounced out with the rejoinder that he thought he was attending a committee not a ‘diktat’, much to the amusement of the external examiner. Henry was never afraid to speak truth to power, announcing to one new professorial appointment that he had not been his choice for the post, while also intervening on other occasions to ensure that the physical discomfort of administrative staff who were freezing in winter in the ill-heated and draughty building was at least partially alleviated  by the installation of fan heaters.

In 1998, Henry’s magnum opus 'The Balkan Economies, c. 1800-1914: Evolution Without Development' was published by CUP to international acclaim, even from those like John Lampe, some of whose work Henry had critiqued, and by Ivan T. Behrend who thought the book likely to become ‘the most authentic work on the topic’. The scholarship and informed judgments of the book have stood the test of time, and the book remains essential reading in its field.

While the quality of the book was predicted by many of his colleagues in the Department of Economic and Social History, few foresaw what was about to happen in the Balkans. Except Henry of course. He wrote to The Times offering the newspaper a two-page analysis of how the 600th anniversary of the Field of Blackbirds battle (Kosovo Polje) of 1389 would give rise to a serious military conflict in the Balkans. The Times replied saying that his academic ideas would not be of interest to their readers. When the conflict came on to the streets of Kirkcaldy, with the attempted assassination of a Croatian campaigner for independence from Yugoslavia, Henry did literally get his day in the High Court, when he was called as an expert witness on the Balkans in the subsequent trial for attempted murder. Events in Yugoslavia and Serbia-Montenegro, as well as the hyperinflation in Greece 1941-1946 all continued to attract Henry’s academic attention and a two-volume history of Macedonia appeared in 2016. 

A true scholar and a remarkably straightforward and straight-talking man, Henry was also a canny investor. When asked, he generously offered colleagues advice on what to do with their Abbey National shares as the move from its being a mutual society to a bank was effected, or for how long they might hold their newly-issued Vodafone shares in 1988. However, no one followed his example in buying undervalued lock-up garages, Henry’s perhaps prescient view being that while future Labour governments would seek to extend the reach of the Capital Gains Tax, they would never get round to taxing garages.

Professor Martin Chick, Professor of Economic History