The Exchange

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 ...

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...

The program for the upcoming Harvard Business School conference, "Varieties of Big Business: Business Groups in the West," has been posted. Among the presenters are Takashi Hikino, Andrea Colli, and Richard Langlois. The one-day meeting, to be held at HBS on October 28, 2016, is open to the public, but registration is requested.     The conference organizers are David Collis, Asli Colpan, and Geoffrey Jones. Questions may be directed to Holly Salter .

A few months before the BHC annual meeting in Denver, the American Historical Association will meet there, on January 5-8, 2017. The preliminary program has recently been posted on the AHA webs site.      As in past years, the BHC, as an affiliated organization, is a session sponsor. A luncheon on Friday, January 6, will focus on a round table discussion of "A New Materialism? The Economic and Beyond," with speakers Fahad Bishara (University of Virginia), Robyn d'Avignon (New York University), Geoff Eley (University of Michigan), and Christine Rosen (University of California, Berkeley). Ken Lipartito (Florida International University) will chair the session. Tickets are required and can be purchased through the AHA registration portal. The BHC also is a sponsor of AHA Session 239 , “Capitalistic Visions, Complicated Realities: Entrepreneurs, Consumers, and Commercial Culture in the Early Republic,” which will take place on January 7 at 1:30.    ...