The Exchange

The German Historical Institute London has issued a call for papers for a conference to be held there on June 22-24, 2017: "Moralising Commerce in a Globalising World – Multidisciplinary approaches to a history of economic conscience, 1600-1900." According to the call for papers, This conference aims to provide a focus for discussion of how we might historicise economic conscience, investigating the means and processes by which individuals and collective actors have learned to see their own economic choices as contributing to a global system and to reflect on the impacts of their choices on other people and places, both near and far. Accordingly, our interest is less in critical characterisations of global systems – colonialism, imperialism, capitalism for example – or the social movements that inscribed those critiques on their banners than in the structures of sentiment and knowledge that made possible new articulations between understandings of moral obligation, loca...

The History Project will hold its next conference, on "The New Economic History of India," on May 11-12, 2017, at the University of Cambridge. The conference will be particularly concerned with the economic history of India in relation to exchanges across frontiers, the history of the law, and the history of economic thought. The organizing committee welcomes proposals for papers, on any period, from advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and recent Ph.D. recipients. The deadline for submission of proposals is November 1, 2016 . For more details and the on-line submission form, please see the call for papers . Questions may be addressed to histproj@fas.harvard.edu .

The First World Congress of Business History (which is being held in combination with the annual European Business History Association [EBHA] meeting) got under way yesterday (August 25) in Bergen, Norway. The event began with a keynote speech on Thursday evening by Mira Wilkins, on "The Historical Impact of Multinational Enterprise on the Modern World Economy." For those unable to attend, the online program contains links to PDFs of many of the papers being presented. Images are available on the EBHA Facebook pages .

The Business History Initiative at Harvard Business School is sponsoring a conference on "Varieties of Big Business: Business Groups in the West," to be held at HBS on October 28, 2016. Organized by David Collis, Asli Colpan, and Geoffrey Jones, This conference will bring together scholars interested in business strategy and organization, governance, and economic development. The discussions will explore the long-term evolution and developmental role of different varieties of large enterprises in the developed economies of North America and Western Europe, focusing on understudied business groups. This conference will also examine nation-specific large-enterprise economies and the diversified business groups within them, and the resilience, stagnation or disappearance of the business group organization in international perspectives. The program has not yet been posted, but registration is open. Questions may be addressed to Holly Salter at hsalter@hbs.edu .

The 11th Sound Economic History Workshop will be hosted by the Department of Political and Economic Studies, University of Helsinki in Helsinki, Finland, on November 3-4, 2016. The keynote speakers will be Jaime Reis (ICS) and Susanna Fellman (Gothenburg). According to the call for papers : The main aim of the Sound Workshop is to gather young researchers in a friendly and non-imposing environment where they can present their research and receive constructive criticism from their peers and leading economic historians. Another aim of the workshop is to demonstrate the breadth of (especially Nordic) Economic History as an academic discipline, so there is no theme to the workshop, and submissions are encouraged from any sub-­field of economic and social history. Nordic scholars and scholars based in a Nordic country will be given preference, but others warmly welcome to apply. The workshop organizers particularly encourage presentations by PhD students and post-docs. Prospective spea...

The Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society has announced a conference, "Hidden Capitalism: Beyond, Below, and Outside the Visible Market," to be held at the Hagley Library and Museum in Wilmington, Delaware, on October 27 November 10, 2017. The conference was initiated by Lisa Jacobson (UC Santa Barbara) and Ken Lipartito (Florida International University), who are joined on the program committee by Roger Horowitz (Hagley Museum and Library) and Wendy Woloson (Rutgers University). The call for papers states: In reviving the study of capitalism, scholars have emphasized the transformative power of markets and commodification. Yet, a crucial part of what drives capitalism falls outside of waged relations and formal, visible exchange. . . . we invite proposals that explore the substantial economic activity that occurs on the margins and in the concealed corners of the formal economy. These activities may be hidden or take place in “markets” that are no...

The 18th Biennial meeting of the Conference on Historical Analysis and Research in Marketing (CHARM) will be held June 1-4, 2017, at Liverpool John Moores University in Liverpool, UK. The theme of the meeting will be "Explorations in Globalization and Glocalization: Marketing History through the Ages." In the call for papers , the organizers say: We call on scholars from around the world to cast a critical look on the history of marketing and how these outputs might be taken to reflect on past epochs to enhance our understanding. Both individual papers and entire panels on all aspects of marketing history, historic marketing, and the history of marketing thought in all geographic areas and all time frames are welcome. Submissions, due by December 18, 2016 , should be directed to the program chair, Richard A. Hawkins, at charm.liverpool.2017 @gmail.com .           The CHARM meeting also includes a Doctoral Workshop. Doctoral students with ...

In this edition of "Over the Counter": A Junto post by Tom Cutterham, "Women and the History of Capitalism," highlights the essays by Ellen Hartigan O'Connor and Amy Dru Stanley in the Summer 2016 Journal of the Early Republic forum on women's history in the early Republic. Among Warwick Digital Collections , a number of relevant series: "LEO--The World's First Business Computer"; digitized Railway Review from the 1880s and 1890s; and "Sales Catalogues of the Swedish East India Company" (in Swedish, but with an English-language discussion here ). The Messynessy blog posted an article on "Working in the Paris Fashion Industry 100 Years Ago," with many illustrations from Les Créateurs de la Mode (1910); the full text of that publication is available digitally as well from the Internet Archive. The "Library and Archives Canada" blog features a colorful poster set from the Empire Marketing Board. Ro...

This week the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) announced its newest grant recipients, including 28 awards totaling nearly $1.7 million, for its "Next Generation PhD" planning and implementation grants, designed to help academia rethink "how PhD students who immerse themselves deeply in graduate humanities research and writing can look to apply their skills and experience beyond teaching and professor positions to a broader range of careers." Three of these grants have been awarded to members of the business history community and their universities: Edward Balleisen, Duke University ("Doctoral Training for the Versatile Humanist") Kenneth Lipartito, Florida International University ("Bridging the Gap: Linking History PhD Training to Nonacademic Employment") John Majewski, UC Santa Barbara ("Training for Nonacademic Careers in a Research-University Setting") A (gated) Chronicle of Higher Education article discussin...

The Centre for the History of Retailing and Distribution (CHORD) will hold its 2016 conference in at the University of Wolverhampton on September 15. The theme for the meeting is "Retailing and Distribution before 1600." The program , which includes links to abstracts of the papers, has now been posted. For details about registration and other information, please consult the conference website . Questions may be addressed to Laura Ugolini at: l.ugolini@wlv.ac.uk .

The Scandinavian Economic History Review has posted two calls for papers for special issues on topics of interest.     The first is for an issue focusing on "The History of Business and War." The guest editor will be Erik Lakomaa of the Stockholm School of Economics. The deadline for submissions is November 1, 2016 . For the complete call for papers and a listing of possible topics, please consult the journal website .      The second is for an issue on "Retail Trade, Consumption, and the Construction of Markets from the 19th to the 21st Century." The co-editors for that issue will be Fredrik Sandgren of Uppsala University and Tristan Jacques, of the University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne/IDHES. The deadline for submissions is February 28, 2017 . Please see the journal website for the complete call for papers.

Over at the Legal History Blog , Victoria Saker Woeste has provided an extensive report on "Law in the History of Capitalism," the recent conference for advanced graduate students organized by the Legal History Consortium on July 27-28, and sponsored by the American Bar Foundation and the University of Chicago Law School. Fifteen students were chosen to participate from a competitive field of fifty-eight applicants; among the several presenters well known in business history circles were Judge Glock, Elizabeth Harmon, Nate Holdren, and Sean Vanatta. Session topics included "Corporations, Personhood, and Privacy"; "Currency and National Debt in Comparative Perspective"; "The Capitalist Transition: Trade, Technology, and Slavery"; "Workers’ Compensation and the Historicization of Labor"; and "Credit, Markets, and Regulation in the Postwar Era." The plenary address was provided by Christine Desan of Harvard Law School, who spo...

The Economic and Business History Society (EBHS) will hold its 2017 annual meeting in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, on May 25-27. According to the conference website , proposals for presentations on any aspect of ancient to recent economic or business history are solicited, as are proposals for whole panels. Submissions from graduate students and non-academic affiliates are welcome.      Proposals should include an abstract of no more than 500 words and contact details and may be submitted through the EBHS website or via email to ebhs2017@ebhsoc.org . The deadline for submissions is February 15, 2017.      Questions about the meeting or organization may be addressed to Program Chair Vincent Geloso, vincentgeloso@hotmail.com , or EBHS President Fred Gates, fred.gates@swosu.edu . Please see the complete call for papers for additional information.

Several organization have recently announced the recipients of business history-related prizes and fellowships: The Editorial Advisory Board of the Business History Review has announced that the winner of the 2015 Henrietta Larson Article Award is Christina Lubinski , for “Global Trade and Indian Politics: The German Dye Business in India before 1947.” The article, published in the autumn 2015 issue of the BHR, is currently free to download from Cambridge University Press Journals. Brian Phillips Murphy of CUNY has won the SHEAR 2016 James Broussard Best First Book Prize for Building the Empire State: Political Economy in the Early Republic (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015). Sean Bottomley (Université de Toulouse Capitol) has been awarded the 2016 Economic History Society Prize for the best first monograph in economic and/or social history for The British Patent System during the Industrial Revolution, 1700-1852 (Cambridge University Press, 2014). The Mahoney Priz...