The Exchange

A compilation of some of the recently published and forthcoming books of interest to business and economic historians: Marcelo Bucheli and R. Daniel Wadhwani, eds., Organizations in Time: History, Theory, Methods (Oxford University Press, January 2014) Adam Clulow, The Company and the Shogun: The Dutch Encounter with Tokugawa Japan (Columbia University Press, December 2013) Katherine C. Epstein, Torpedo: Inventing the Military-Industrial Complex in the United States and Great Britain (Harvard University Press, January 2014) Walter A. Friedman, Fortune Tellers: The Story of America's First Economic Forecasters (Princeton University Press, December 2013) Margaret C. Jacob, The First Knowledge Economy: Human Capital and the European Economy, 1750-1850 (Cambridge University Press, January 2014) David Koistinen, Confronting Decline: The Political Economy of Deindustrialization in Twentieth-Century New England (University Press of Florida, December 2013) Robert MacDouga

This being Christmas Eve, a few gifts: Christmas from the perspectives of business and economic history: American History through Christmas Cards (Wisconsin Historical Society) Ghosts of Christmases Past (Historians@Work, Marquette University) "Was Dickens's Christmas Carol borrowed from Lowell's Mill Girls? ( Boston Globe ) Dickens and the Construction of Christmas (History Today) "Historians explain how 100-year-old traditions are still a part of seasonal celebration" (CandG News) Christmas Creep and Other Joyous Holiday Traditions (The Historical Society blog) First Christmas in America (in Tallahassee?) (WCTV) Who Decorated the First Christmas Tree? ( Wall Street Journal ) Inside the $1 Billion Christmas Tree Business (Gawker) Festive Facts about the Business of Christmas ( Orlando Business Journal ) "Ten Milestones in Christmas History That Might Surprise You" ( Forbes ) Who Invented Electric Christmas Lights? (Library of C

The Business History Conference will hold its next annual meeting on March 13-15, 2014,  in Frankfurt, Germany, in cooperation with the Gesellschaft für Unternehmensgeschichte (GUG). The theme of the meeting is "The Virtues and Vices of Businesses—A Historical Perspective." The meeting web page has now been updated to include the preliminary program and registration information. Those interested in attending are encouraged to consult the website for lodging details and other relevant information.

The Institute for Historical Studies (IHS) at the University of Texas at Austin announces its 2014-2015 theme, "Capital and Commodities." The theme description states: The co-development of financial and ecological crises, the global proliferation of mass consumerism, and ongoing social and military conflicts over access to natural resources suggest the critical importance of historicizing the study of capital and commodities. . . . the Institute encourages analytical approaches that underscore the sociocultural, political, environmental and intellectual underpinnings of the history of capital and commodities. We especially welcome proposals that encompass broad timespans (including the medieval and early modern periods) and that reach across geographic areas and disciplinary boundaries.   The full description is available at: http://www.utexas.edu/cola/ insts/historicalstudies/news/ 7106 . The IHS invites applications for resident fellows at all ranks; the deadline

The Economic History Society will hold its next annual meeting at the University of Warwick on March 28-30, 2014. The preliminary program is now available on the Society's website. Sessions that may be of particular interest include: "Twentieth-Century British Industry"; "Regional Industry and Institutions"; "Railways and Economic Growth"; "Business Practices"; "State, Community, and Economy"; "Financial Crises"; "Capital Markets"; "Companies and the State"; "Financial Bubbles"; and "Mass Consumption and Marketing." The program will also feature the EHS Women's Committee 25th Anniversary Session, chaired by Helen Paul and including papers by Pat Thane, Maxine Berg, and Pat Hudson.     The 2014 Tawney Lecture will be delivered by Pat Hudson.     For fuller information, please see the EHS conference website .

"The Challenges of International Banking Regulation and Supervision after 1945" is a conference to be held at the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management on January 16-17, 2014, jointly organized by the European Association for Banking and Financial History (EABH), the ESRC-founded project 'The Development of International Financial Regulation and Supervision (1961-1982), based at the University of Glasgow , and the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management . The organizers explain: Financial regulation and supervision has gained prominence in the public debate over the past few years. The aim of this conference is to contextualise discussions about financial regulation and supervision since 1945, in particular by providing a historical perspective to current debates. We want to bring together different approaches – legal, economic, political science/political economy, historical – in order to enrich and widen the debate about international regulation and s

The Business History Society of Japan will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2014. To commemorate this milestone, the organization will hold a special Congress on the theme of “Competition and Cooperation,” focusing on the many facets of the three industrial revolutions—why they came about, how they developed, and what distinguishes them from one another—and the new ventures that business history scholars need to undertake in order to grasp the significance of new business systems. The general session on the main theme, titled “New Horizons in Business History,” will bring together renowned researchers from Japan, Europe, the United States, and Asia to give keynote lectures on challenges facing the discipline and ideal approaches for future progress. The Congress will take place at Bunkyo Gakuin University, Tokyo, on September 11-13, 2014. Given the 50th anniversary and the increasingly powerful role that globalization continues to play in the realm of research, the BHSJ has deci

The December 2013 issue of Enterprise & Society is now available. In addition to the articles, this issue also contains Kenneth Lipartito's presidential address and abstracts of the dissertations presented in the Krooss Prize Dissertation session at the annual meeting: Presidential Address    Kenneth Lipartito , "Connecting the Cultural and the Material in Business History" Dissertation Summaries    Gavin Benke , "Electronic Bits and Ten Gallon Hats"    Bartow J. Elmore , "Citizen Coke: An Environmental and Political History of the Coca Cola Company"    Caitlin C. Rosenthal , "From Memory to Mastery: Accounting for Control in America, 1750–1880" Articles    Hsien-chun Wang , "Revisiting the Niuzhuang Oil Mill (1868–1870): Transferring Western Technology into China"    Madeleine Zelin , "Chinese Business Practice in the Late Imperial Period"    Jose Galindo , "The Economic Expansion of an Elite Busin

The Business History Initiative at Harvard Business School is hosting a conference on June 13-14, 2014 :  "Business History in Africa, Asia, and Latin America: Integrating Course Development and New Research." The conference will focus on course development in business history and the history of capitalism beyond the developed economies of Europe, the United States, and East Asia. It will seek to leverage existing expertise about the field from countries where it is more established, as well as the experience of other disciplines, including world history and international business. Topics to be discussed include how to integrate the latest research into teaching materials; new and innovative pedagogical methods, including web-based learning and the use of oral history; the availability of primary sources; and the different interests and requirements of students in business schools, history departments, and in graduate programs. The conference will draw on an extensive glob

The Securities and Exchange Commission Historical Society has opened a new gallery in its on-line museum: “ The Mechanics of Legislation: Congress, the SEC and Financial Regulation .” It examines the Insider Trading and Securities Fraud Enforcement Act of 1988 (ITSFEA) and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999. The gallery includes links to almost 500 primary resources, including letters from legislators such as Speaker of the House Carl Albert and U.S. Representative Richard Armey to their constituents; papers from the William J. Clinton Library; and oral history interviews with former U.S. Senator Edward Kaufman and former U.S. Representative Michael Oxley. As noted by gallery curator Kurt Hohenstein, Over the years, financial legislation has become increasingly more complicated because our system has grown more complex. From the public’s view, the passage of legislation often appears to have come out of the blue, rapid and responsive to a public outcry for reform. In reality, m

"Human Trafficking in Early America," an interdisciplinary conference hosted by the University of Pennsylvania, and co-sponsored by the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, the Department of History at the University of Maryland, College Park, and the Department of History at Drew University, will be held on April 23-25, 2015. The co-organizers are Richard Bell (Maryland) and Sharon Braslaw Sundue (Drew). As the organizers explain, "In early America, human trafficking took many forms, engaging and displacing native, African and European populations in every decade and in every colony and state. Drawing upon a wave of new scholarship on Indian captivity, the middle passage, the domestic slave trade, child abduction and sex trafficking, this conference offers a timely opportunity to examine the cultures and shadow economies created by and elaborated around forced migration in North America and the Atlantic world before 1860."     Paper proposals should

The Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation offers fellowship and travel award programs to support projects that present creative approaches to the study of invention and innovation in American society. These include, but are not limited to, historical research and documentation projects resulting in dissertations, theses, publications, exhibitions, educational initiatives, documentary films, or other multimedia products. The programs provide access to the expertise of the Institution's research staff and the vast invention and technology collections of the National Museum of American History (NMAH).  The NMAH Archives Center documents both individuals and firms across a range of time periods and subject areas. Representative collections include the Western Union Telegraph Company Records, ca. 1840-1994 and the Earl S. Tupper Papers, documenting Tupper, and his invention, Tupperware. In addition, the NMAH Library offers long runs of historical technology seri

The next annual meeting of the Economic History Association (EHA) will take place in Columbus, Ohio, on September 12-14, 2014. The theme of the meeting will be "Political Economy and Economic History." The Program Committee (John Wallis, University of Maryland, chair, together with Dan Bogart, Karen Clay, and Tracy Dennison) welcomes submissions on all subjects in economic history, though some preference will be given to papers that specifically fit the theme. Papers should be submitted individually, but authors may suggest to the Committee that three particular papers fit well together in a panel. In considering the meeting theme, the organizers explain: Politics has a massive impact on economic outcomes. States redistribute wealth, make up for market failures, and enact policies that can devastate an economy or promote long run growth.  They also provide the essential public goods of security, the rule of law, and a means of exchange. Without these, life is brutal and t

A new three-year collaborative research project on the business history of fashion, based in the School of History at the University of Leeds, has been awarded €1m funding from the HERA II (Humanities in the European Research Area II) Joint Research Programme. ‘The Enterprise of Culture’ "seeks to explore the relationships among fashion as a cultural phenomenon and a business enterprise, and to examine the transmission of fashion as a cultural form across national and international boundaries by intermediaries such as educational institutions, media outlets, advertisers, branders, trend forecasters, and retailers." The principal investigators are from the universities of Leeds (project leader Regina Lee Blaszczyk), Erasmus Rotterdam (Ben Wubs), Oslo (Véronique Pouillard Maliks), Heriot-Watt (Robert MacIntosh), St. Andrews (Barbara Townley), and Newcastle (Alan McKinley).     Over the next three years, the Enterprise of Culture team will hold a series of workshops, confer

The Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society and the German Historical Institute–DC are co-sponsoring a conference on "Green Capitalism? Exploring the Crossroads of Environmental and Business History," to be held October 30-31, 2014 at the Hagley Museum and Library in Wilmington, Delaware. This conference hopes to point to fresh opportunities for joining the insights of environmental and business history. The organizers are especially interested in providing historical perspectives on a question of obvious relevance today: Can capitalism be green–or at least greener? Our title– “Green Capitalism?”– is admittedly drawn from contemporary discourse. But we are convinced that history can provide invaluable insights into the complex and changing relationship between business and the environment. Conference planners are currently accepting proposals for papers that "consider in specific historical contexts the extent to which the business enterprises t

Among several digital history projects, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania has two that are of particular interest to business and economic historians.     The first, " Closed for Business: The Story of Bankers Trust Company during the Great Depression ," describes the rise and fall of Bankers Trust Company, the first large bank to fail in Philadelphia during the Great Depression. The site includes: 320 digitized primary source documents, including documents about the bank's operation, letters from depositors desperate to get access to their funds after the bank's failure, and newspaper clippings about the aftermath of the bank's failure; biographies of some of the people and organizations highlighted in the documents; contextual essays (including one by R. Daniel Wadhwani) about the history of Bankers Trust Company, the Great Depression in Philadelphia, and the 1930s banking crisis in Philadelphia; and an educators' page with ideas about how

There will be a half-day workshop entitled "Trading Medicines: The Global Drug Trade in Perspective" on January 10, 2014, at the London School of Economics. The workshop has been organized by Claire Griffin (Cambridge) and Patrick Wallis (LSE) and is supported by the Wellcome Trust, the Economic History Society, and the Royal Historical Society. The program and abstracts of the papers are available here . According to the organizers, This half-day workshop examines the supply and reception of medical drugs during the creation of an early modern global market from the sixteenth through to the eighteenth centuries. It addresses a key question in the history of medicine: how did early modern globalisation impact medicine in Europe? The workshop explores developments across various European nations, their empires, and global trading networks. Papers will focus on the broad sweep of medical commodities that were exchanged, taking a long view and considering as many different s

The Association of Business Historians (ABH) will hold its third Tony Slaven Doctoral Training Workshop on June 26-27, 2014, immediately preceding the 2014 ABH annual conference at Newcastle University Business School; Workshop participants will be welcome to attend the annual conference. Students at any stage of their doctoral career, whether first year or near submitting, are encouraged to attend. In addition to providing new researchers with an opportunity to discuss their work with other research students in a related discipline, the sessions will also include at least one skills-related workshop.     One aim of the Workshop is to strengthen links among students working on business history and related topics in various departments and disciplines. For the purposes of the Workshop, `business history’ is therefore interpreted broadly. Students will present on a pre-circulated paper of no more than 5,000 words, and will be expected to act as discussant for another’s paper, with fu

On September 17-19, 2014, the Centre for Economic and Business History and the Institute for the Study of Slavery at the University of Nottingham will co-host a conference on "The Business of Slavery." The conference aims to bring together assessments of the contributions of enslaved people to the economy of different eras and societies and from various perspectives, including the wider economy, the slave traders, the slave holders and the slaves themselves. It will compare these assessments over chronological eras and in societies around the globe. Papers are invited which discuss themes as diverse as (but which are not restricted to); slave trading (including foreign and indigenous trades, legal and illegal trades), the economies of slave societies, the economies of the slaves themselves, (including hiring out), the use of slaves by freedmen and freedwomen, serfdom, debt bondage, prostitution, forced (including child) labour, and from chronological periods as divers

On September 18-20, 2014, the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C., will host a conference on "Shady Business: White Collar Crime in History." The conveners are Edward Balleisen (History Department /Kenan Institute for Ethics, Duke University), Hartmut Berghoff (German Historical Institute), and Christopher McKenna (Said Business School, University of Oxford). According to the call for papers: Daniel Defoe observed in the early 18th century that "[e]very degree of business" has "its invitation to do evil." Today, hardly a day passes without the media reporting on new allegations and legal proceedings relating to supposed professional misconduct on the part of corporate executives. . . . This raises many questions. What economic, company-related, and social conditions encourage this behavior? What accounts for the apparent increase of white collar crime in some areas and its decline in others? What background information sheds light on it? W

The Centre for Medical History at the University of Exeter will host a workshop on April 8-9, 2014, on "The Landscape of Occupations in Pre-Industrial Britain and Continental Europe, c.1400-1750." The two-day workshop is designed to bring together papers addressing any of the following four themes: Individuals, Economic Activity, and Developments in the Early Modern Economy; Gender and Occupation; Guilds, Colleges and Occupational Identity; and Rural and Urban Economic Lives. As the call for papers explains, Occupational identity and the economic activity of individuals have seen growing attention from historians and historical geographers over the past thirty or forty years. While earlier generations of historians, including Postan and Tawney, addressed occupational structure as an aspect of the general structure of agricultural and industrial production, researchers are increasingly focusing upon the question of economic activity from the perspective of the individual.

The European Association for Banking and Financial History (EABH) and Queen’s University Centre for Economic History (QUCEH) invite the submission of research papers from advanced Ph.D. students and recent postdoctoral researchers in financial history for a "New Scholars Workshop," to be held in Belfast on April 16, 2014. This one-day intensive workshop is specifically intended for new scholars in financial history, broadly defined, who wish to practice and improve their research through presentation and discussion with more experienced scholars. Participants who have a full research paper and are intending in the near future to go on the academic job market, or to submit their work to a top field journal in business, economic, or financial history, are particularly encouraged to apply. Research in any theme and methodology in banking and financial history is welcome. Comparative approaches are encouraged and co-authored papers will be accepted. The workshop’s keynote s

Nearly a year ago we featured The Color Revolution (MIT Press, 2012) by Regina Lee Blaszczyk , who holds the chair in the history of business and society at the University of Leeds. The book has now been awarded the 2013 Sally Hacker Prize by the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT). The prize is awarded at SHOT's annual meeting to honor "exceptional scholarship that reaches beyond the academy." The citation reads in part, "Blaszczyk's beautifully, thoughtfully designed book is bound to become a standard academic reference—for historians of technology as well as for a range of other scholars—but that's only the beginning; her work is of great importance because of the exemplary way in which it reaches out to a broader audience." The full citation can be found on the Leeds faculty news website.

A round-up of some recent blog posts, including some from sites not specifically focused on business and economic history: The Junto has a recap of the recent PEAES Conference, "Ligaments: Everyday Collections of Colonial Economies" The Legal History Blog has a plug for Ajay Mehrotra's recent Making the Modern American Fiscal State New Books in Business/American Studies has an audio interview with Sharon Ann Murphy, discussing her Investing in Life: Insurance in Antebellum America [see here for a list of all the subjects covered by the New Books Network] The NEP-HIS blog (reviews of recent papers of interest); and Andrew Smith, in his blog "The Past Speaks," writes about one of these paper commentaries in "The Business Historian and the Archive in the Post-Snowden Era" The Page 99 Test looks at Jonathan Rees' Refrigeration Nation Howell Harris, in his blog "A Stove Less Ordinary," posts many examples of and commentary on ea

October 7, 2013, marked the one hundredth anniversary of the moving assembly line at Ford's plant in Highland Park, Michigan. The occasion generated a good deal of media commentary; the links below provide a sample. Game Changer: Ford Celebrates (Ford Motor Company) Ford's Assembly Line Turns 100 (NY Daily News ) Ford's Assembly Line Turns 100 ( Car and Driver ) Henry Ford's Assembly Line Turns 100 ("Here and Now" [NPR]) Henry Ford's Assembly Line (CBS News) Video of the line: The Ford Model T Assembly Line (1919) The Ford Model T Ford's Moving Assembly Line (a History Day student documentary) 100 Years of the Moving Assembly Line (Ford video) How Ford's Assembly Line Has Changed (Bloomberg) Photos and Video (Business Insider)

The Journal of Historical Research in Marketing (JHRM) has issued a call for papers for a special issue on "Marketing History from Below: Bringing the Consumer Back In," to be guest edited by Stefan Schwarzkopf. The call states, Although marketing scholarship frequently asserts that marketing strategy begins and ends with consumers, most marketing historical work still focuses on firms, brands, products, advertising, packaging, government institutions, and the history of marketing thought. Marketing historiography thus extends the perspective of those who market, as opposed to the voice and influence of those who are being marketed to. What's more, despite the recent acknowledgement that consumers are very active in the creation of value in marketing, very little historical scholarship exists that shows how this value creation by consumers was actually shaped. This special issue attempts to address this hiatus and asks what historical research in marketing can contr

The German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C., offers three fellowships of interest to business historians: Fellowship in the History of Consumption and Fellowship in Economic and Social History : both are 6- to 12-month fellowships for research on the respective topic. Each recipient should take up the fellowship on September 1, 2014 . Preference is given to applicants on the postdoctoral level. Fellows are expected to be in residence at the GHI and participate in GHI activities and events, including planning a workshop on the fellowship's focus. Fellows will have the opportunity to make use of the resources in the Washington, DC area, including the Library of Congress and the National Archives, while pursuing their own research agenda. The monthly stipend is Euro 3,000 for EU citizens and $3,200 for US citizens. In addition, fellowship recipients based in Europe will receive reimbursement for their round-trip airfare to the United States. Doctoral Fellowship i

The Richard Robinson Business History Workshop at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon, will host a meeting on "The Social History of Money and Credit" on May 22-24, 2014 . The organizers are interested in papers that engage the meanings and uses of financial instruments in daily life as well as in the popular imagination. Papers concerning the social history of money and credit in non-Western contexts are particularly encouraged. Submissions from all disciplines are welcome as long as topics are addressed historically. For a list of suggested topics, please see the full call for papers . Those interested in presenting should submit a one-page paper abstract and CV to the workshop coordinators Erika Vause (Saint Xavier University), Thomas Luckett (Portland State University), or Chia Yin Hsu (Portland State University) at historyworkshop@pdx.edu by December 6, 2013 . Accepted papers will be pre-circulated and discussed in plenary sessions on May 23 and May 24 .

The summer of 2014 marks the centenary of the start of the First World War. On July 10-11, 2014, a workshop entitled "Armageddon and Mammon" will consider the war’s impact on international business. It will take place in the City of London at East India House. As the organizers explain, The First World War had a dramatic and immediate impact on international business, particularly the financial services sector, but the impact quickly spread to other sectors as international trade and investment were disrupted. As the war progressed, the integrated world economy that had emerged during the first great era of globalization disintegrated and liberal assumptions and practices were discarded. The realities of the total war shattered the assumption that it would be “business as usual.” The disruption of international supply chains by the war created threats and opportunities for firms in many countries. The seizure of patents, factories, and other assets in belligerent countries

The Institute for Historical Studies (IHS) at the University of Texas at Austin expects to appoint four resident fellows for 2014-2015 whose work engages with the year's theme, "Capital and Commodities." Fellowships are available for all ranks. They are not restricted to historians, but projects must have significant historical content. According to the call for applicants: The co-development of financial and ecological crises, the global proliferation of mass consumerism, and ongoing social and military conflicts over access to natural resources suggest the critical importance of historicizing the study of capital and commodities. Indeed, over the last several decades, historians have compiled an impressive body of work on the history of commodities and their production, circulation, uses, and cultural significance. Research into commodity chains has forced historians to consider questions of social identity formation and has invigorated analysis of systems of comm

The current issue (No. 6, 2013) of Business History is a special issue on "Long-Term Perspectives on Family Business." As guest editors Andrea Colli, Carole Howorth, and Mary Rose write, "for a long time business history and family business studies have developed on parallel tracks that have rarely crossed. . . . This special issue arose . . . with the aim of promoting an increased dialogue between business history and family business researchers." Contents include: Hartmut Berghoff , "Blending personal and managerial capitalism: Bertelsmann's rise from medium-sized publisher to global media corporation and service provider, 1950–2010" Geoffrey Tweedale , "Backstreet capitalism: An analysis of the family firm in the nineteenth-century Sheffield cutlery industry" Robin Holt and Andrew Popp , "Emotion, succession, and the family firm: Josiah Wedgwood & Sons" Oswald Jones, Abby Ghobadian, Nicolas O'Regan, and Valerie A

As the U.S. federal shutdown continues and the default deadline grows closer, a number of historians have commented on the situation. Here is a sampling of links: Richard Sylla , interview for the History News Network (HNN) Louis Hyman and Stephen Mihm , among others, quoted on the default possibility at HNN Sean Wilentz on "Obama and the Debt," in the October 7 New York Times Daniel Yergin , on NPR's "Morning Edition," October 9 Alice Rivlin , at Brookings Niall Ferguson , in the October 4 Wall Street Journal Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff 's work on prior defaults, cited in Economix Blog, October 4, New York Times Julian Zelizer , on past government shutdowns, October 1, NPR's "Here and Now" Stephen Mihm , at Bloomberg, on an analogy with the Nullification Crisis, and again here , on the rift between the Republican Party and Business on the shutdown issue  HNN has also compiled a list of links to recent commentary (not n

The Program in Economic History at Yale is hosting a conference entitled "Russian, Soviet, and Post-Soviet Economic History: New Frontiers" on November 1-2, 2013, at 28 Hillhouse Avenue, Tobin Lounge, Yale University. The conference is co-organized by Timothy Guinnane (Yale) and Steven Nafziger (Williams College). The conference begins on Friday, November 1, at 2 p.m. and ends at 3 p.m. on Saturday, November 2. The conference program is available at http://www.econ.yale.edu/~egcenter/EH2013_Russian.htm . All papers will be posted online so that all attending can read them in advance. Presentations will be limited to 10 minutes, and session time will be devoted almost exclusively to discussion. All are welcome to attend the conference and take part in the discussion. Attendees not on the program are asked to contact Steven Nafziger( steven.nafziger@williams.edu ), so that organizers will know how many people to expect.

The Association of Business Historians will hold its next annual meeting on June 27-28, 2014, at the Newcastle University Business School. The theme of the meeting will be "Crisis, Accountability, and Institutions." The call for papers states: The global financial crisis which began in 2007 was the most severe since the Great Depression. In the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis and the global recession that followed, questions have been raised concerning issues of accountability and governance in international financial institutions, investment banks, credit rating agencies, and amongst top management teams. To reflect the zeitgeist, we welcome in particular papers that are framed around the historical theme of: accounting for crisis; escalation/de-escalation of a crisis; organisational/ industry decline and failure; strategic responses/turnaround strategies; the social consequences of a crisis; labour’s response to a crisis; accountability of decision-maker

The Oxford Journals Doctoral Colloquium in Business History will be held in conjunction with the Business History Conference 2014 annual meeting in Frankfurt, Germany. This prestigious workshop, sponsored by the BHC and funded by the Journals Division of Oxford University Press, will take place in Frankfurt on Wednesday, March 12 and Thursday, March 13 , 2014. The colloquium is limited to ten students. Participants work intensively with a distinguished group of BHC-affiliated scholars that includes at least two BHC officers. The colloquium will discuss dissertation proposals, relevant literatures and research strategies, and employment opportunities in business history. This colloquium is intended for doctoral candidates in the early stages of their dissertation projects. If you are interested in being considered for this colloquium, please submit by November 15, 2013 , to BHC2014@Hagley.org a statement of interest, a CV, a preliminary or final dissertation prospectus of 10-15 pages

The program for the 2014 American Historical Association meeting, to be held in Washington, D.C., on January 2-5, 2014, is now available on-line.  The program entry site allows searching by keyword as well as the standard daily listing; one can also find BHC-sponsored sessions under the affiliated societies section .     The BHC-sponsored program items are: Session 22 : "Public Interest, Private Profit: Business, Government, and the Civic Good,"chaired by Richard R. John Session 55 : "Commerce and Knowledge in the Seventeenth Century," chaired by Martha C. Howell Session 99 : "The U.S. 1880–1920: Turning Point or More of the Same?" chaired by Steven H. Hahn Session 231 : "Wine, Drinking, and Identity," chaired by Uwe Spiekermann Business History Conference Luncheon : "Is the History of Capitalism the New Business History?" chaired by Richard R. John and featuring Louis Galambos, Jonathan Levy, Sven Beckert, and Pamela Laird