Max Weber and Contemporary Historiography: R. H. Tawney's Reception of Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism

In Anglo-American scholarship, Max Weber's Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism has received particular attention because of the overlap of historical experiences. When exploring the Puritan revolution in England and the development of capitalism in the American colonies, the relationship between the capitalist ethos and Protestant ethics is central to the analysis. For this reason, both British and American historians have been interested in Weber's themes. The aim of this study is to shed light on how British and American historians evaluated and adopted Weber's theoretical and methodological assets. To this end, British socioeconomic historian R. H. Tawney's work Religion and the Rise of Capitalism is the focus of this study. Although Tawney criticized Weber's work in terms of its loss of historicity, use of ideal type, and emphasis on simple causality, his interpretation of Weber's work as a whole was decisive f or his own work.