The Exchange

On April 2 at 9:00 a.m., the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) will make individual records from the 1940 U.S. Census available to the public for the first time. The U.S. Census Bureau has set up a special site in anticipation of the release. It contains links, an interactive overview of the 1940 Census, historical facts, videos, and pictures, and comparisons of the results of the 1940 Census with corresponding information from the 2010 Census. The preview site is well worth a look on its own. The Census website will directly link to the National Archives site.

"The Business Historian" is a site devoted to the aggregation of business and management history content on the web. Managed by Kevin Tennent of the University of York, who also publishes "The Business History Blog" (which he has said will probably no longer be active), the "newspaper" "aims to bring you the best daily digest of business and management history related posts on the web." It is billed as "the weekly paper of the Association of Business Historians ."    Paper.li offers news aggregation software that allows editors to collect content according to criteria and sources that they designate and then display it in a newspaper-style format. The site can search blogs, Twitter, Facebook, news media, and indeed any open website for content. Editors have some flexibility and control in accepting and ordering the data that paper.li collects.

The Global History and Culture Centre at the University of Warwick has issued a call for papers for its upcoming conference on "Global Commodities: The Material Culture of Early Modern Connections, 1400-1800," to be held on December 12-14, 2012. The organizers explain: "This conference seeks to explore how our understanding of early modern global connections changes if we consider the role material culture played in shaping such connections."    Contributions in the following areas are particularly welcome, though the list is not intended to be exclusive: specific commodities, luxuries and artistic objects, including traded goods, rarities, objects in cabinets of curiosities and their role in elite and non-elite consumption; the role of nodes (ports and ships, custom and auction houses, courts and cities) in the global exchange of goods; production for global markets/distant markets, with special reference to issues of design, customization and quality. Paper

The company founded by Josiah Wedgwood was merged with Waterford in 1986, and then "fell into administration" in 2009. A High Court judge in the UK ruled on December 19, 2011, that the Wedgwood Museum's 10,000-piece collection of  fine pottery is not held in trust, and so can be sold to pay off a claim by the Pension Protection Fund (PPF).  New pensions legislation holds any solvent organization liable for the entire debt of a pension fund if any of its employees are in that pension fund; the museum has five eligible employees. The government has just announced that it sees no legal ground on which to appeal the ruling, creating a firestorm of negative reaction. It is hoped that private or public benefactors will be found to prevent the collection's being broken up and to keep it available for public display.     Andrew Popp , John Wilson , and Robin Holt of the University of Liverpool School of Management have written in opposition to the sale of the museum

Paper proposals are invited for a conference on Asian Historical Economics that will take place in Tokyo on September 13-15, 2012. The conference is the fourth in a series which began at Hitotsubashi University in 2007 and continued with meetings at Venice in 2008 and Beijing in 2010. At Beijing, it was decided to establish an Asian Historical Economics Society to organize a biennial conference, with an open call for papers. This fourth conference in Tokyo thus builds on the success of the earlier conferences, but also marks the beginning of a new phase with wider participation. The conference aims to bring together researchers working on the economic history of all the main regions of Asia, as well as those comparing Asia with other regions. The conference will build on a number of themes where research is currently active. Please see the full call for papers for a list of suggested topics.    For each proposed paper, an abstract not exceeding 500 words, together with institutiona

Part of the Bizzell Memorial Library at the University of Oklahoma, the Harry W. Bass Business History Collection contains a number of important resources, some of them now available in digital form. Daniel A. Wren , the long-time curator of the collection, has created a video that describes the collection's origins and scope. As the Bass Collection website explains, The collection's purpose is stated broadly to include not only histories of business leaders and firms but also the economic, social, and political forces that influenced the role of business in society. . . . In addition to a number of general reference items, the Collection houses close to 2000 rare books as well as manuscripts including the archives of J. and W. Seligman Company . The Bass Collection also holds the publications from the Retail Intelligence System (formerly known as Management Horizons). Our most recent acquisition is the Robert Kahn Collection on Retailing History.  Digital m

Early modernist readers may be interested in a Forum called "Rethinking Mercantilism," published in the January 2012 issue of the William & Mary Quarterly . Contents include: Steve Pincus, “Rethinking Mercantilism: Political Economy, the British Empire, and the Atlantic World in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries” Cathy Matson, “Imperial Political Economy: An Ideological Debate and Shifting Practices Christian J. Koot, “Balancing Center and Periphery” Susan D. Amussen, “Political Economy and Imperial Practice” Trevor Burnard, “Making a Whig Empire Work: Transatlantic Politics and the Imperial Economy in Britain and British America” Margaret Ellen Newell, “Putting the “Political” Back in Political Economy (This Is Not Your Parents’ Mercantilism)” Steve Pincus, “Reconfiguring the British Empire” Full access to articles requires a subscription, but those interested can read an abstract of the introduction.    The same issue also contains Farley Grubb

For its next annual conference , to be held September 5-6, 2012, at the University of Wolverhampton, the Centre for the History of Retailing and Distribution (CHORD) invites proposals that explore retailing and/or distribution from a historical perspective. Papers focusing on all historical periods or geographical areas and based on any methodological and disciplinary perspective are welcome. Themes of interest include—but are not limited to: Commercial cultures; Retailing and distribution in popular culture and the media; Innovation and change / stagnation and failure; Credit, finance and the economics of retailing and distribution; Large-scale retailing—super, hyper, monster; Crime and illegal practices; Politics, the state and individual enterprise; Ethics and fairness; Markets, informal exchanges, penny capitalism; Retailing and distribution in hard times; Advertising, marketing and sales strategies; Retailing and distribution work, from 'management' to the s

Two new websites of interest have recently launched, one focusing on monetary history and one on banking regulation. The first is DAMIN : Silver Monetary Depreciation and International Relations (Dépréciation de l’Argent Monétaire et relations Internationales)  The site explains: The axis of the work is the study of the depreciation of silver in the second half of the XIXth century and its consequences in developed countries. We will study more specifically the differences between developed countries and Japan. . . . the history of Japan is a condensed history of European history: monetary unification, adoption of a silver coin, a change to the gold standard. As trade and finance were globalized, DAMIN will include all countries concerned by the silver question: USA, Latin America, Europe, India, China, Japan and all the connected questions (prices, transportation, import/export, etc.). A first round table was held at Paris (January 2012) and a second is scheduled for May 16-1

Some time ago, we reported that JSTOR had opened up early journal material (pre-1923 for U.S. publications) to users without charge ( "Early Journal Content" ). In an effort to further broaden access for those not able to use JSTOR materials through institutional subscriptions, JSTOR has implemented the "Register & Read" program. This allows users who do not have access to JSTOR to register and gain read-only access to limited archival content. The program does not apply to material behind the "moving wall," which provides a time lag of 3-5 years for most journal content. There are limitations on the number of articles a user can view in a given time period.    In the beta release of Register & Read, 75 journals will have some content available. It is hoped that more will be added. Among the included journals of possible interest to Exchange readers are Academy of Management Journal (and 3 other Academy publications) American Histor

In February, the History of Capitalism Program at the University of Georgia held a conference titled "Capitalism in America: A New History." Although the meeting is past, the program and paper abstracts are still available on the conference website . Among the participants were Tracey Deutsch, Colleen Dunlavy, Richard John, Allan Kulikoff, and Naomi Lamoreaux. As the organizers see it, Business historians, economic historians, labor historians, social historians, cultural historians, and political historians all continued to engage with the history of capitalism, but did so with distinct methodological and historiographical concerns that prevented the cross-pollination of ideas and the development of a coherent body of knowledge. In recent years, however, both young and established scholars have been producing cutting-edge work that seeks to unite these disparate fields under the rubric of the history of capitalism. The Georgia History of Capitalism Program also runs a

In an upcoming event in its "Money Series," the Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University will feature "Debt: The Long View." The symposium will take place on Thursday, March 8, 2012, in the Davis Auditorium.    Participants include David Graeber, Goldsmiths College; Louis Hyman, Cornell University; and Greta Krippner, University of Michigan; the moderators will be Peter Goodman of the Huffington Post and Daniel Immerwahr, post-doctoral research scholar at the Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University.    The discussion will explore how debt has changed over time and its significance in our culture and society. Speakers will address the role of the state and banks in shaping our debt regime and the significance of Occupy Wall Street and other social movements that seek to resist or constrain the control of debtors by their creditors.    The event is free and open to the public without tickets or registration, but seating is on a first come,

Organized to celebrate the 175th anniversary of the railroad in France and on the Île-de-France, the conference will meet on November 22-24, 2012, in Paris. The meeting is being organized by the Association pour l’histoire des chemins de fer (AHICF), the Fédération des sociétés historiques et archéologiques de Paris et de l’Île-de-France, and the Région Île-de-France /Service Patrimoines et Inventaire.    Those proposing papers should send the following information, no later than June 1, 2012 :      complete contact information;      the proposed paper title and a one-page abstract ;      the title and affiliation of the author(s) as they should appear      on the program if the proposal were accepted Materials may be sent via email to contact@ahicf.com . Please consult the full call for papers for additional information.