The Exchange

Spring being a busy time for publishers, herewith an additional listing (by no means complete) of new books in business and economic history, covering April and May 2016: Daniel Amsterdam , Roaring Metropolis: Businessmen's Campaign for a Civic Welfare State (University of Pennsylvania Press, April 2016) Joerg Baten , ed., A History of the Global Economy: 1500 to the Present (Cambridge University Press, April 2016) Daniel Bivona and Marlene Tromp , eds., Culture and Money in the Nineteenth Century: Abstracting Economics (Ohio University Press, May 2016) Michael Bonner , Confederate Political Economy: Creating and Managing a Southern Corporatist Nation (Louisiana State University Press, May 2016) Silvana Colella , Charlotte Riddell's City Novels and Victorian Business: Narrating Capitalism (Routledge, April 2016) Peter B. Doran , Breaking Rockefeller: The Incredible Story of the Ambitious Rivals Who Toppled an Oil Empire (Penguin Random House, May 2016) Lars Engw...

With great sadness we report the death of long-time BHC member James Baughman, who died on March 26, 2016, of lung cancer at the age of 64. He was Fetzer-Bascom Professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he taught his entire career. He also held an affiliate appointment in the University’s Department of History and was chair of the advisory board for the University’s Center for the History of Print and Digital Culture.      An Ohio native (and great Cleveland Indians fan), Baughman received his BA in history at Harvard University in 1974. He earned his MA, M.Phil. and Ph.D. in history at Columbia.      Baughman's scholarly work includes four books: Television’s Guardians: The Federal Communications Commission and the Politics of Programming, 1958-1967 (1985); Henry R. Luce and the Rise of the Modern American News Media (1987; rev. ed., 2001); The Republic of Mass Culture: Journalism, Film...

The Institute for Political History, the Journal of Policy History , the Department of Government at the University of Texas Austin, and the Peabody College of Vanderbilt University are hosting the ninth biennial Conference on Policy History in Nashville, Tennessee, June 1-4, 2016. The conference program , which features a great many business historians, has now been posted. Sessions are not numbered, but readers may find topics and speakers by using their browser's search function, as all sessions are listed on a single webpage. Topics of particular interest include "Making Markets: Rethinking the Late-Twentieth-Century Regulatory State," with comment by Ed Balleisen "Institutional Finance, Institutional Politics: Central Banks, Mortgage Finance, and Consumer Lending in the Mid-20th Century" "Trade Associations: Contracting Out the State," featuring papers by Laura Phillips Sawyer, Benjamin Waterhouse, and Jennifer Delton, and commentary by Ch...

"Historicizing 'The Economy' " is a two-day workshop to be held at Harvard University on September 23-24, 2016. According to the organizers, the "workshop aims to bring together scholars working on the emergence and the history of different conceptions of the 'economic' and the 'economy' as objects of economic thought and political practice."      The workshop is being organized by Daniel Hirschman (University of Michigan/Brown University), Adam Leeds (Harvard University/Columbia University), and Onur Özgöde (Harvard University). Potential participants should submit an abstract (500-word max.) via email to all three organizers by May 1, 2016 .      The project is supported by the New Horizons Initiative of the History of Economics Society and the Harvard Institute for Global Law and Policy. Limited funding will be available to offset travel and lodging costs; space for non-participant attendees will be limited.     ...

Following on workshops in Copenhagen (2014), Miami (2015), and Portland (2016) ,  the fourth workshop in the series “Historical Approaches to Entrepreneurship Theory & Research” will be held at Copenhagen Business School on May 24, 2016. The conveners are Bill Gartner (Copenhagen Business School), David Kirsch (Univ. of Maryland), Christina Lubinski (Copenhagen Business School), R. Daniel Wadhwani (Univ. of the Pacific), and Friederike Welter (Univ. of Siegen and Institut für Mittelstandsforschung Bonn); as they explain, In recent years, both business historians and entrepreneurship scholars have grown increasingly interested in the promise of using historical sources, methods and reasoning in entrepreneurship research. History, it has been argued, can be valuable in addressing a number of limitations in traditional approaches to studying entrepreneurship, including in accounting for contexts and institutions, in understanding the relationship between entrepreneurship and ...

Herewith a sample of titles in business and economic history recently out and forthcoming in paperback: Volker R. Berghahn , American Big Business in Britain and Germany: A Comparative History of Two "Special Relationships" in the 20th Century (Princeton University Press, May 2016 [2014]) Patricia P. Clavin , Securing the World Economy: The Reinvention of the League of Nations, 1920-1946 (Oxford University Press, February 2016 [2013]) Koenraad Donker van Heel , Mrs. Tsenhor: A Female Entrepreneur in Ancient Egypt (Oxford University Press, April 2016 [2014]) Steve Fraser , The Age of Acquiescence: The Life and Death of American Resistance to Organized Wealth and Power (Basic Books, March 2016 [2015]) Walter A. Friedman , Fortune Tellers: The Story of America's First Economic Forecaster s (Princeton University Press, April 2016 [2013]) Michele Gillespie , Katharine and R. J. Reynolds: Partners of Fortune in the Making of the New South (University of Georgia ...

For those planning to attend the upcoming BHC annual meeting in Portland, Oregon, a reminder that the opportunity for on-line registration closes on Sunday, March 20 . It will be possible to register in person at the conference, but that carries a $40 surcharge.     The meeting, with a theme of "Reinterpretation," will run from Thursday evening, March 31, through Saturday evening, April 2. In addition to dozens of sessions on a wide variety of topics, program highlights include an opening plenary by Geoffrey Jones of Harvard Business School on "Making Business History Matter," the Krooss Dissertation session, a plenary on "Digital Business History," and the presidential address by Margaret Graham of McGill University.     Please consult the BHC 2016 meeting website for full details.

The European Association for Banking and Financial History (EABH) will hold its annual meeting on April 29, 2016, in Vienna, Austria, in cooperation with the Oesterreichische Nationalbank. The theme of the meeting is "Financial Interconnections in History: Did financial globalisation increase or decrease stability?" According to the meeting announcement, In the 1980s and 1990s a new wave of technologies and mathematical modelling transformed the nature and performance of international capital markets, prompting new entrants, new structures and new markets. In turn, these innovations generated fresh challenges for prudential supervision, risk assessment and regulation that persisted through the ensuing 30 years. This conference will explore these themes from a longer term perspective as well as drawing on the experience and testimony of participants in the transformation of markets in the 1980s and 1990s. The program is now available on the EABH website.      ...

The First World Congress of Business History , to be held in conjunction with the annual meeting of the European Business History Association (EBHA), will convene in Bergen, Norway, on August 25-27, 2016.  The preliminary program has now been posted. In addition to presenters from the United States, Canada, and Western Europe, speakers include several scholars from the Far East, Latin America, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, South Africa, and Australia.     Registration , with an early registration discount that expires June 1 , is available on-line as of today (March 11, 2016). Please see the World Congress website for additional information as it becomes available.

Common-Place is a "journal of early American life," published on-line in cooperation with the University of Connecticut and the American Antiquarian Society. As a digital project, Common-Place publishes a wide variety of information beyond reviews and articles--such as "Object Lessons" (on material culture) and "Tales from the Vault" (essays inspired by archival materials). The most recent issue, just published, contains two articles of particular interest to business historians. One is Justene G. Hill 's review essay on Calvin Schemerhorn's The Business of Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism (Yale University Press, 2015). The other is a "Tale from the Vault" by Pierre Gervais that focuses on market manipulation in the 1780s, based on a letter to flour dealer Levi Hollingsworth of Philadelphia.    Readers might also find of interest a "Notes on the Text" feature by Cybèle T. Gontar, who discusses the background ...

The 2016 conference of CHORD (Centre for the History of Retailing and Distribution) will be held on September 15, 2016, at Wolverhampton City Campus, University of Wolverhampton. The theme of the meeting is "Retailing and Distribution before 1600." Papers focusing on any pre-1600 period (including papers based on  archaeology) or geographical area are welcome, as are both experienced and new speakers, including speakers without an institutional affiliation.      Individual papers are usually 20 minutes in length, followed by 10 minutes for questions and discussion. Shorter, 10-minute ‘work in progress’ presentations are also welcome. Those wishing to participate should send a title and abstract of c.300 to 400 words, specifying whether the proposal is for a 10- or a 20-minute presentation, to Laura Ugolini, at l.ugolini@wlv.ac.uk by April 8, 2016. Anyone who would like to discuss their ideas or ask questions should feel free to consult Laura Ugolini as well....

"Commodity Histories," according to its founders, is a public forum for research postings, news and information about the history of commodities. Our aim is to raise public awareness of the rich histories and cultures of Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America via their crucial role in the growing of crops and the production of commodities that have become an indispensable aspect of people’s daily lives throughout the world.       The site contains a number of resources, under the rubric "Research Journeys." The project organizers are also maintaining a directory of scholars and others with an interest in various topics in commodity history, as well as links to other related projects; suggestions for contributions can be made through the site's contact form.       "Commodity Histories" is organized by Sandip Hazareesingh from the Open University’s History Department, and Jon Curry-Machado . It has been produced by the Open Unive...

The symposium, “A New Materialism? Rethinking the History of Global Capitalism at the Nexus of Culture and Political Economy,” will take place at the University of Michigan on April 1-2, 2016. The meeting “aims to complicate some of the prevailing assumptions of the “New History of Capitalism” and to showcase recent work in cultural history explicitly engaged with various dimensions of global capitalism.” Speakers include: Howard Brick (University of Michigan), Elspeth Brown (University of Toronto), Kathleen Brown (University of Pennsylvania), N.D.B. Connolly (New York University), Jay Cook (University of Michigan), Konstantin Dierks (Indiana University Bloomington), Geoff Eley (University of Michigan), Nan Enstad (University of Wisconsin-Madison), Alison Isenberg (Princeton University), Susan Scott Parrish (University of Michigan), Seth Rockman (Brown University), and Andrew Zimmerman (George Washington University). The full program has been posted on the website.     P...