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 Charlott...

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 ...

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....

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 ...