The Exchange

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 ...