Kuyper’s Armory: The First Chair of Economics at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 1904 –1948

Shortly after World War II, in 1948, the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU) was enriched with a Faculty of Economics. Today it lives on under the name School of Business and Economics. Less well known is the fact that the VU already had a chair of economics, established in 1904 within the Faculty of Law and held for nearly half a century by P. A. Diepenhorst (1879–1953). This article deals respectively with the historical background of this chair, its establishment, and its historical significance. A discussion of these issues sheds light not only on the development of economics in the Netherlands, but also on the relationship between economics and faith, and more generally on the legacy of VU co-founder Abraham Kuyper’s ideal of Christian science. It is concluded that while Diepenhorst’s professorship fulfilled a long-cherished desire, he could not meet the expectation of developing a Neocalvinist economics. Nevertheless, he played a significant role in providing economic education to Reformed believers both inside and outside academia.