The Exchange

The Centre for Financial History at Cambridge hosted a two-day conference in September 2016 on "Credit, Currency & Commerce: New Perspectives in Financial and Monetary History." The conference program is available here . The keynote speakers were Martin Daunton, who spoke on "Bretton Woods Revisited: Currency, Commerce and Contestation," and Anne Murphy, whose topic was "The Genesis of Modern Management: the Eighteenth-Century Bank of England at Work." An extensive conference report by Sabine Schneider has been posted. Support for the meeting was provided by the Economic History Society, the Centre for Financial History and the Faculty of History at the University of Cambridge.

For the reading pleasure of those academics on holiday break this week, we provide some links to the work of business historians recently featured on-line: Christy Chapin appeared on "Who Makes Cents?" to discuss the centrality of insurance companies to American health care. The "Ben Franklin's World" podcast, run by Liz Covart, recently hosted three episodes of interest:     Brian Murphy on his book, Building the Empire State     Jonathan Eacott on his work, Selling Empire: India in the Making of Britain and America, 1700-1830     Mary Beth Norton , on the Tea Crisis of 1773   Ken Lipartito has posted Part II of his essay on capitalism and slavery. On BackStory, two rebroadcasts of interest in December: "Counter Culture: A History of Shopping" and "New and Improved: Advertising in America." Thomas Zeiler has a review essay on Marc-William Palen's "Conspiracy" of Free Trade on the Imperial & Global For

The list of accepted panels for 2018 has been posted on the World Economic History Congress (WEHC) website. There is now ongoing a second and final call for proposals, with a deadline of June 30, 2017 . According to the WEHC statement Organizers are strongly encouraged to consult the list of already accepted sessions, with the goal of adding to the breadth of the Congress program, as well as to find models of successful proposals. As before, we will continue to welcome innovation in the format of individual sessions as appropriate for the topic, the methodologies employed, and the participants invited. In the accepted panels section, panel titles link to full abstracts of the session and lists of participants. Information is also provided about those panels that have posted specific calls for papers. Nearly all the panels will of course be of interest, but some highlights include "Business History in the Age of Modern Globalization" "Multinationals and the T

The Business History Conference , the largest professional organization of business historians in the United States, has cancelled plans to hold its 2018 annual meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina. Its decision is in response to the adoption of HB2 by the state government, and the recent rejection of a repeal of the measure by the North Carolina legislature. The BHC will instead hold its 2018 annual meeting at the Baltimore Embassy Suites Inner Harbor in Maryland.       The BHC’s action culminates a nine-month process of discussion with its members and its intended partner for the 2018 meeting, the Charlotte Marriott City Center Hotel . Consultation with the BHC’s membership and leadership showed strong sentiment against the planned North Carolina location, as many would not or could not attend a conference in the state so long as the HB2 measure remained in effect. The BHC trustees voted in early December 2016 to cancel the hotel contract with the Charlotte Marriott, but action w

Long-time BHC member (past-president, 2012-13) and former editor of Enterprise & Society Ken Lipartito has launched a blog called "In the Age of Trump," styled as "an occasional blog on economics, politics, and culture" and "a first draft of history in the age of Trump." The point of view may be inferred from the site's logo, which is an image of the sinking Titanic . Lipartito, who teaches history at Florida International University in Miami ("the future Atlantis"), promises to continue writing the blog "as long as I can keep treading water."     The initial post, "An Economic History of Trumpism," provides a link to an extended essay posted on SSRN. A second essay (in two parts), is titled "Capitalism and Slavery Redux" and comments on recent publications and discussion on that topic.

The European Association for Banking and Financial History (EABH), in co-operation with BNP Paribas and Banque Lombard Odier, will hold a workshop on "Appraisal in the Digital Era" on June 22, 2017, in Paris, France.      The one-day workshop is designed for archivists, records managers, and information professionals of financial and public institutions, as well as researchers and users of digital archival material. According to the organizers, The amount of official and unofficial digital records that financial and public organisations produce on a daily basis is monumental. Accurate appraisal of digital records is an integral part of modern day business in general - not only for financial institutions. Accessibility, timely retrieval of crucial documents, contextual understanding and cost savings are only some of the benefits of high quality appraisal policies.  The workshop committee (Carmen Hofmann [EABH], Roger Nougaret [BNP Paribas], Hrvoje Stancic [University of

The October 2016 number of the Business History Review is a special issue on "Food and Agriculture." The contents can currently be accessed without subscription or charge on the Cambridge University Press BHR site. Articles include Emily Pawley, "Cataloging Nature: Standardizing Fruit Varieties in the United States, 1800–1860" Casey Marina Lurtz, "Developing the Mexican Countryside: The Department of Fomento's Social Project of Modernization" Teresa da Silva Lopes, "Building Brand Reputation through Third-Party Endorsement: Fair Trade in British Chocolate" Ai Hisano, "The Rise of Synthetic Colors in the American Food Industry, 1870–1940" Sarah Milov, "Promoting Agriculture: Farmers, the State, and Checkoff Marketing, 1935–2005" Shane Hamilton, "Revisiting the History of Agribusiness" Readers will also be interested to know that the BHR has set up a series of "online collections," comprisi

The 2017 meeting of the Organization of American Historians (OAH) will take place in New Orleans, Louisiana, on April 6-9. The theme of the meeting is "Circulation."     The Business History Conference is sponsoring several sessions at the meeting. The early version of the OAH program on-line does not allow linking, but the list can be found by selecting "Business and Economy" on the By Interest" section of the program page . BHC-related sessions are: "New Perspectives on Advertising History" "Pimps, Rebels, and 'Fancy Girls': Troubled Circulations in the North American Slave Trade" "The Post Office Department and the Shaping of American Life" "Captive Minds and Footloose Capital: Making Transnational Capitalism in Postwar America" "Grades of Purity: Agricultural Marketing and Circulating Commodities" Readers might also be particularly interested in "Economic Circulations in the Early A

For a special issue of Business History , original research papers are invited that focus on changing secondhand markets and economies involving a variety of commodities ranging from used clothing, pre-owned cars, and antiquities to recycled ships and electronic waste. The guest editors, Karen Tranberg Hansen, Professor Emerita, Department of Anthropology, Northwestern University, and Jennifer Le Zotte, Lecturer, Department of History, University of Nevada, Reno, write: This special issue aims to present the best of ongoing interdisciplinary scholarship on historical and contemporary processes involved in the flow of secondhand objects and materials, their transformations and revaluations, and the persons, policies, and markets involved with them.  Recent concerns with the speed and effects of commodity flows have brought fresh scholarly attention to secondhand economies both in terms of their history and of their contemporary significance for livelihoods and sustainability.  Sinc

The Association of Business Historians (ABH) will hold its next annual meeting in Glasgow, Scotland, on June 29-July 1, 2017. The theme of the conference will be "The Human Factor in Business History." According to the call for papers : Understanding the strategy and structure of firms forms a vital part of the discipline of business history, as does the deployment of essential tools such as typologies of company forms, theories of the firm and firm growth and so on. But it is vital, too, for business historians to recognise and investigate those who stand at the heart of business history: the people who create firms, those who own them and those who work for them in various capacities. . . .  Just as important, though, is the human impact of the firm and other organisations that employ people, not least because even today those employed spend a very large proportion of their time in the workplace. . . .  The firm is therefore a place not only for work, which itself in

The Department of History at the University of Delaware invites applications for a full-time, tenure-track assistant professor in the history of capitalism in North America in the “Long Nineteenth Century.” According to the job announcement: We seek a scholar of exceptional promise prepared to teach both graduate and undergraduate courses. Possible areas of specialization include race and ethnicity, business, political economy, and consumer culture. Preferred candidates will have research and teaching interests that complement one or more of the following graduate and undergraduate initiatives at the University of Delaware: (a) the Hagley Program in Capitalism, Technology, and Culture, (b) environmental humanities, (c) African American history and public humanities, and (d) material culture studies. Applicants whose work involves a transnational perspective are especially welcome. This position is also part of a commitment by the department and the College of Arts and Sciences to s

The conference "Techniques of the Corporation" will take place on May 4-6, 2017, at the University of Toronto, hosted by the university's Technoscience Research Unit.  The call for papers explains: Over the last 150 years, corporations, like universities and laboratories, have generated an abundance of knowledge-making techniques. . . . As dominant forms of the last century, corporations are assembled with instruments, infrastructures, and interventions that arrange and rearrange the dynamics of capitalism. These techniques of the corporation have filtered into our daily lives, influencing everyday understandings of self, inequality, environment, and society. . . . This conference aims to foster a timely conversation between Science and Technology Studies (STS) approaches and the recent histories of capitalism. . . . The conference takes as its starting place North American corporations with the understanding that corporations are multinational forms with complex t

The Economic History Association (EHA) will hold its 2017 annual meeting in San Jose, California, on September 15-17. The theme of the meeting will be "Macroeconomic Regimes and Policies: The Quest for Economic and Financial Stability and Growth." According to the call for papers : Topics of interest are wide ranging including: the history and origins of monetary, fiscal and financial institutions and markets; monetary and exchange rate regimes (specie, fiat); fiscal regimes; the history of central banks and monetary policy; and the relationship between macroeconomic regimes and policy in causing or correcting major economic and financial disturbances (depressions, recessions, inflations, deflations and financial crises) as well as influencing economic growth. The studies could be comparative, country specific or global. The program committee welcomes submissions on all subjects in economic history, though some preference will be given to papers that fit the theme

The 9th edition of the EBHA ( European Business History Association ) Summer School will take place in Ancona (Italy) from Monday, September 4, to Saturday, September 9, 2017. The school aims at providing doctoral students with an overview of relevant research results and of innovative tools and methodologies in the field of Business History. It is organized jointly by the European Business History Association (EBHA), the Università Politecnica delle Marche, and the Italian Association for Business History (ASSI). Students will be accommodated in the beautiful town of Ancona debating and discussing their research with leading international scholars.      The title of the school will be "Business History: Debates, Challenges and Opportunities." The school will focus on theoretical, methodological and practical issues which are of relevance for advanced research in business history. The main aim of the school is to provide students with a full understanding of the newest trend

The BHC's Liaison Committee (Alexia Yates, Vicki Howard, Ellen Hartigan-O'Connor, and Rowena Olegario) would like to remind everyone of the annual BHC-sponsored luncheon at the upcoming meeting of the American Historical Association in Denver . Those attending the conference who would like to take part in the lunch should purchase a ticket ($40.00) as part of the registration process.     We have another fantastic lineup this year to address a topic that cuts across multiple historical fields. The details are: "A New Materialism? The Economic and Beyond" Friday, January 6, 2017: 12:00-1:30 p.m. Mile High Ballroom 1F (Colorado Convention Center, Ballroom Level)  Speakers: Fahad Bishara, University of Virginia Christine Rosen, University of California, Berkeley Robyn d'Avignon, New York University Geoff Eley, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor Chair: Kenneth J. Lipartito, Florida International University  Please come along for what promises to be a liv

Last June, The Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University presented a symposium on "Science & Capitalism: Entangled Histories." The description and program are available here ; papers will be published in a special issue of Osiris in 2018. The recipients of the 2016 Wadsworth Prize of the Business Archives Council are Richard Roberts and David Kynsaton for The Lion Wakes: A Modern History of HSBC . On "Pro-Market," the blog of the Stigler Center at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, Richard John has an extended discussion of his current research in an interview entitled "When Did Americans Stop Being Antimonopoly?" Over 75 German historians have recently protested the sudden firing of Manfred Grieger, the historian and archivist for Volkswagen who was instrumental in allowing access to the company's archives and in detailing its practices during the Second World War. The New York Times coverage, featu

The Early American History blog The Junto has posted a multi-part examination of the recent book edited by Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman, Slavery's Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development (2016).  The book's table of contents, which includes essays by--among many others--Edward Baptist, Caitlin Rosenthal, Joshua Rothman, Kathryn Boodry,  and John Majewski, is available here . The volume is the product of a 2011 conference organized jointly by Harvard and Brown universities. The forum essays are: Tom Cutterham, "Forum Introduction" Casey Schmitt, "The Global and the Hemispheric" Justin Leroy, "Commodities and Agents in the History of Slavery" Christy Clark-Pujara, "Slave Economies of the U.S. North"   Kevin Waite, "Slavery's Civil War?"

Hosted by the Economic History Society of Australia and New Zealand (EHSANZ), the annual  Asia-Pacific Economic and Business History (APEBH) Conference will be held on February 9-11, 2017, at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT). The theme will be "Current Trends in Economic and Business History Research." According to the call for papers , Researchers across a broad range of disciplines are warmly welcomed. Early career researchers are encouraged to participate. The conference organisers are also particularly interested in attracting papers that examine topics in the context of the Asia-Pacific region and papers that provide an international comparative perspective, in particular for settler-economies like Australia and New Zealand. The conference looks for new research from a number of perspectives, including those of the cliometrician, the business historian, the applied economist, as well as the social historian. There is ample scope for new interp

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), in collaboration with the Minnesota Digital Library, has mounted an on-line exhibit on "Quack Cures and Self-Remedies: Patent Medicine." As the introduction says, "The story of patent medicine is multi-layered. It is about the phenomenon of Americans self-medicating with opiates, alcohol, and herbal supplements, as well as women’s health and healthcare options. It follows the evolution of advertising in America and the rise of chromolithography printing techniques and newspaper advertisements." The well-illustrated site contains brief essays on various aspects of the role of patent medicines in American life in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.     The DPLA itself is the home of an ever-growing list of on-line exhibits of interest, including the shoe industry in Massachusetts, the transcontinental railroad, the Gold Rush, and many more.

For nearly two decades, Gerard Koot , professor of history at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth (emeritus since 2010), taught NEH Summer Seminars--first on the Industrial Revolution in Britain , and, more recently, on "The Dutch Republic and Britain: The Making of a European World Economy." In the course of those efforts, Koot compiled websites for the projects that contain a wealth of useful materials. The sites include essays by Koot on specific topics, illustrations, bibliographies, and links to primary sources. Also included are students' papers for all the years of the Seminar.     Because these NEH summer seminars are directed at K-12 teachers, most of the materials are designed to be useful for teaching.      

The next annual meeting of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic (SHEAR) will be held on July 20-23, 2017, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. According to the call for papers : The Program Committee invites proposals for sessions and papers exploring all aspects of the history and culture of the early American republic, together with its northern and southern borderlands and transnational connections, c. 1776-1861. We particularly seek: New scholarship in the history of African Americans, Native Americans, the carceral state, gender, and sexuality Work informed by new methodologies and approaches Participants from outside traditional boundaries of the field (for example, the Parks Service) Submissions focusing on pedagogy, public history, and digital humanities. We also welcome panels that foster audience participation, feature pre-circulated papers, or assess the state of a given field. Scholars who desire to participate in non-traditional sessions (such a

The 2017 Doctoral Colloquium in Business History will be held in conjunction with the annual meeting. The workshop, funded by Cambridge University Press, will take place in Denver, Colorado, on Wednesday, March 29, and Thursday, March 30, 2017. Typically limited to ten students, the colloquium is open to early-stage doctoral candidates pursuing dissertation research within the broad field of business history, from any relevant discipline. Participants work intensively with a distinguished group of BHC-affiliated scholars (including at least two BHC officers), discussing dissertation proposals, relevant literatures and research strategies, and career trajectories.        Applications are due by November 15, 2016 , via email to bhc@hagley.org and should include: a statement of interest; CV; preliminary or final dissertation prospectus (10-15 pages); and a letter of support from the dissertation supervisor (or prospective supervisor). Questions about the colloquium should be sent to

Readers may not be aware of a relatively new service at H-Net, made possible by the reorganization of the long-standing humanities internet presence into H-Net Commons. The H-Net Book Channel offers a wide variety of information about new books in nearly every humanities field; one user describes it as "a book discovery service." In addition to announcements of new books, the site contains a growing number of short historiographical essays, pieces connecting headlines to deeper academic research, and ideas for ways to incorporate recent publications into introductory and survey courses.      Though not perfect (a quick check of "Economic History" books, for example, finds many titles that are, at best, peripheral to that field, and titles are duplicated if published in more than one format initially), the site is now importing the catalogues of over a hundred publishers, making it a comprehensive source. Each title is provided with links to its WorldCat and Ama

A partial list of books of interest published or forthcoming in paperback from September through December (and a few we missed): Richard Adelstein , The Rise of Planning in Industrial America, 1865-1914 (Routledge, December 2016 [2012]) Glenn J. Ames , Colbert, Mercantilism, and the French Quest for Asian Trade (Northern Illinois University Press, August 2016 [1996]) Edward E. Baptist , The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism (Basic Books, October 2016 [2014]) Nancy Cox , The Complete Tradesman: A  Study of Retailing, 1550-1820 (Routledge, August 2016 [2000]) Barry Eichengreen , Hall of Mirrors: The Great Depression, the Great Recession, and the Uses--and Misuses--of History (Oxford University Press, October 2016 [2015]) Robert E. Forrester , British Mail Steamers to South America, 1851-1965: A History of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company and Royal Mail Lines (Routledge, September 2016 [2014]) Robert E. Gallamore and John R.

The Knowledge and Library Services Division at Harvard Business School has produced an interesting web project that provides insight into the influence of Benjamin Franklin's 1758 essay, The Way to Wealth . According to the website, The Way to Wealth Editions project is directed by Professor Sophus A. Reinert (Harvard Business School) and based on a bibliography of Benjamin Franklin's Way to Wealth compiled by Kenneth E. Carpenter. It seeks to provide students and scholars with an array of unique research tools and contextual essays for understanding the influence and impact of Franklin's seminal essay on work ethic and frugality. The site features a searchable, and growing database of 1000+ editions of The Way to Wealth , special full-text editions to analyze and compare, timeline-maps that illustrate the work's publication history and geographic influence, and a series of interactive essays providing researchers with new insights into the work and its author. R

African Economic History is moving from an annual to bi-annual schedule in 2017. The editors (Mariana Candido, University of Notre Dame; Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin; Jennifer Lofkrantz, Saint Mary's College of California; and Paul E. Lovejoy, York University) welcome submissions in English or French from all disciplines that relate to the economic history of African societies from precolonial times to the present. Essays in a variety of fields and time periods are welcomed, on themes that may include but are not limited to: Labor Slavery and the slave trade Short- and long-distance trade and commercial networks Economic transformations Colonialism and Post-Colonialism Migration Development policies Social and economic inequalities Poverty Agricultural economics Manufacturing Introduction of new technologies Monetization Financing In addition, AEH also considers submissions for thematic special issues.        African Economic History was fou

A selection of bits of interest from around the Web: History Talk interviews Jefferson Cowie on "Deindustrialization, Trade, and the 2016 Presidential Election." The program for "L’industrie française dans la Grande Guerre," a conference to be held on November 15-16, 2016, in Paris, is available on-line (in French). The organizers are Patrick Fridenson and Pacal Griset. The American Economics Association meets each year with a number of related groups, gathered together as the Allied Social Sciences Associations (ASSA); the 2017 meeting will be held in Chicago, Illinois, on January 6-8, 2017. A session of particular interest is Cliometrics in Historical Perspective: In Remembrance of Robert Fogel and Douglass North" (abstracts available). A good resource: old-fashioned page look, but lots of information: links to Library Web servers , by state and around the world. Viveka Hansen has a well-illustrated post on her Textilis blog on "Shop Windo

The folks who run the Imperial and Global Forum blog , a product of the Centre for Imperial and Global History at the History Department, University of Exeter, are also producing a series of podcasts in which historical issues in the field are discussed. Called "Talking Empire" and hosted by Richard Toyes, the series so far includes thirteen installments, several of which may be of interest to readers: The first three discussions center on the legacy of Jack Gallagher and Ronald Robinson's 1953 article on "The Imperialism of Free Trade." Episode nine features Marc-William Palen discussing Adam Smith and empire.      Toyes and the Center plan on adding installments regularly.

The Journal of Historical Research in Marketing (JHRM) invites submissions for a forthcoming special issue, to be published at the end of 2017, on the origins of marketing thought and practices in the United Kingdom. The guest editors for the issue are Andrew Pressey , University of Birmingham ; Mark Tadajewski , Durham University; and Brian Jones , Quinnipiac University. According to the editors, The emergence of marketing in the United Kingdom has received limited attention by historians. Reflecting a desire to flesh out this neglected history, this special issue of JHRM seeks historically oriented contributions that examine early marketing practices in the UK. Please see the special issue call for papers for a list of potential topics and for submission guidelines. The deadline for submissions is May 15, 2017 . Questions may be addressed to any of the guest editors.

The 2016 volume of Essays in Economic & Business History , the journal of the Economic and Business History Society (EBHS), is now available on the society's website. The journal is open access, and the contents can be freely downloaded. Volume 34 contains seven articles and seven book reviews. The $1,000 James Soltow Award for the best paper in the journal in 2016 was conferred on Brad Sturgill and Daniel Giedeman for “Factor Shares, Economic Growth, and the Industrial Revolution.”     Back issues from 1999 to 2015 are also archived on the website.

A workshop titled "Beyond Data: Knowledge Production in Bureaucracies across Science, Commerce, and the State" will be held on June 1-3, 2017, at the German Historical Institute (Washington, D.C.) in cooperation with the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin. The organizers of the meeting are Sebastian Felten, Philipp Lehmann, and Christine von Oertzen of the Max Planck Institute and Simone Lässig of the German Historical Institute. This workshop aims to bring together scholars from different fields to explore how practices of making and using knowledge emerged and evolved within and across science, commerce and state administration. The organizers state in the call for papers: How do bureaucracies produce knowledge from the data they gather? This question has been raised not only in the history of science and technology, but also in colonial and postcolonial studies, business and administration history, media and organization studies. In recent years, p

The Business History Initiative at the Harvard Business School has launched a website "[t]o facilitate understanding the history of global capitalism in its broad societal context." "Historical Data Visualization" displays "historical data on broad economic, social and political trends both globally and within the United States." Materials include maps (both interactive and static), graphs, and datasets (many of which have raw data in Excel format), divided into categories such as "Commodities," "Corporations," "Managing Distance," and "Politics & Economics."

As promised, Part 2 of the Early Fall "new books" list: Alfred C. Mierzejewski , A History of the German Public Pension System: Continuity amid Change (Rowman & Littlefield, March 2016) James Muir , Law, Debt, and Merchant Power: The Civil Courts of Eighteenth-Century Halifax (University of Toronto Press, September 2016) Laurence B. Mussio , A Vision Greater than Themselves: The Making of the Bank of Montreal, 1817-2017 (McGill-Queen's University Press, November 2016) John L. Neufeld , Selling Power: Economics, Policy, and Electric Utilities before 1940 (University of Chicago Press, November 2016) David Andrew Nichols , Engines of Diplomacy: Indian Trading Factories and the Negotiation of American Empire (University of North Carolina Press, May 2016) Avner Offer and Gabriel Söderberg , The Nobel Factor: The Prize in Economics, Social Democracy, and the Market Turn (Princeton University Press, September 2016) S. Paul O'Hara , Inventing the P

Herewith a list, by no means all-inclusive, of books of interest published or forthcoming in hardcover from August through November, with a few earlier titles we missed. The fall list is long, so I've divided it alphabetically into two posts; the second will appear on Friday. Jennifer Aston , Female Entrepreneurship in Nineteenth-Century England: Engagement in the Urban Economy (Palgrave, August 2016) Richard Baldwin , The Great Convergence: Information Technology and the New Globalization (Harvard University Press, November 2016) Melissa Calaresu and Danielle van den Heuvel , eds., Food Hawkers: Selling in the Streets from Antiquity to the Present (Routledge, August 2016) Youssef Cassis, Andrea Colli , and Harm Schröter , eds., The Performance of European Business in the Twentieth Century (Oxford University Press, September 2016) Pierre-Yves Donzé , Industrial Development, Technology Transfer, and Global Competition: A History of the Japanese Watch Industry since 185

The European Business History Association's 21st annual congress will be held in Vienna, Austria, on August 24-26, 2017, at the Vienna University for Economics and Business. The theme for the meeting will be "Transformation in Business and Society: An Historical Approach."     According to the call for papers , Polanyi's "Great Transformation" is just one, albeit prominent, example of how legal, organizational, technological, and political developments force broader socio-economic change. Managing dramatic changes in social patterns and modes of production, such as that entailed by the "fourth industrial revolution," serve as both a challenge and opportunity for business. . . . Even financial crises, political revolutions and regime changes have served as catalysts for the transformation of business institutions and organizations. By changing incentives, legal frameworks, internal compliance and accountability, political upheaval refocuses

A sampling of news of interest from around the web: The Global History and Culture Center at the University of Warwick has an interesting website in support of a project on "Europe's Asian Centuries:  Trading Eurasia, 1600-1815," led by Maxine Berg. Beautiful images from the BBC on "The Abandoned Mansions of Billionaires," showcasing havelis from the Shekhawati region of India. From Cornell University Library, an exhibit on "Persuasive Cartography," featuring maps "intended primarily to influence opinions or beliefs - to send or reinforce messages - rather than to communicate objective geographic information." Subject categories include advertising, money and finance, railroads, and other topics of interest. The Omohundro Institute introduces NEH Fellow Shauna Sweeney , whose project "focuses on female-centered market networks in the Caribbean and their significance to the rise of Atlantic commerce and the transition fr