The Exchange

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Seminars and Institutes  "focus on the study and teaching of significant texts and other resources; provide models of excellent scholarship and teaching; contribute to the intellectual growth of the participants; and build lasting communities of inquiry." The call for proposals for summer 2019 is now open. According to the website, "a Seminar provides an intimate and focused environment in which sixteen participants study a specific humanities topic under the guidance of one or two established scholars"; an Institute "allows twenty-five to thirty-six participants to pursue an intensive program of study under a team of scholarly experts."  Programs are designed for either K-12 educators or college and university faculty.     The proposal deadline for Summer 2019 projects is February 22, 2018 . Full information, including application instructions and program guidelines, is available on the NEH Seminar

The 13th annual "Appalachian Spring" Conference in World History and Economics will take place on April 14-15, 2018, on Appalachian State University’s campus in Boone, North Carolina. This conference is an interdisciplinary meeting aimed at bringing together scholars from Appalachian State University (Boone, NC) and scholars from other universities in North Carolina, the surrounding states, and abroad. This year’s guest speaker will be Dr. Stephen Broadberry, Professor of Economic History and Research Fellow of Nuffield College at Oxford University. The conference will also feature several panels with scholarly papers, divided among different topical themes, including an undergraduate/graduate panel. This year’s theme will be "Convergence and Divergence in World History."       Paper or panel proposals do not have to be directly tied to the conference theme, although papers fitting with the theme will be given special consideration. Graduate students are welcome

For those of you celebrating Christmas today, very best wishes from The Exchange. As a small gift, we provide the following history-related sites of interest: From The Smithsonian online, a brief history of the Christmas card  and a sampling of holiday cards from Smithsonian collections; the New-York Historical Society blog  details the influence of Louis Prang on the American Christmas card market. And the Postal Museum has an interesting essay about "Holiday Parcels in World War I" ; and for collectors, a history of the art of Christmas stamps ;  Anne L. Murphy writes about Christmas and New Year's bonuses for 18th-century bankers This archive provides over 25,000 pages of vintage Christmas catalogs from Sears, Lord & Taylor, Spiegel, Montgomery Ward, and several others. The Hagley Vault features a series of Christmas-related materials  from its holdings. Ellen Caldwell explains "How Charles Dickens Set the American Christmas Dinner Table"

As has become traditional, the 2018 Business History Conference meeting will be preceded by a series of  workshops  on Thursday, April 5. (For full program information, please see our previous post and the BHC meeting website.) The BHC-organized workshops for 2018 are: Publishing Business History , chaired by Albert Churella Teaching Capitalism , co-chaired by Jennifer Black and Eric Hintz Teaching through Adversity , chaired by Anne Murphy In addition to these three workshops, there will be two sponsored workshops: "Classroom Frontiers: Business History Course Development Workshop," sponsored by the Copenhagen Business School; and  "STS and Business History,"  organized by the Canadian Business History Association and the University of Toronto Techno-Science Research Unit. The latter is accepting abstracts from interested scholars, with a deadline of  January 23, 2018 .     Please check back soon for more detailed descriptions of the BHC workshops. Note

The IEEE journal  Annals of the History of Computing invites submissions for a special issue titled “Governance in the History of Computing.” Edited by Gerardo Con Diaz (University of California, Davis), this special issue will showcase how formal and informal forms of governance (from law and policy to self-policing) have shaped the history of computing broadly conceived. According to the call for papers: I n recent years, scholars have developed a keen interest on the historical relationships between information technology and governance. Their work is revealing that computing and telecommunications technologies have been inseparable from the web of formal and informal forms of governance in which they are embedded. In the process they are showing how the study of law, policy, and regulation can shed new light on every major theme in the history of computing—from the design and commercialization of specific technologies, to the politics of their usage, representation, and disposal

The full program for the 2018 meeting of the Business History Conference, which will take place in Baltimore, Maryland, on April 5-7, has been posted on the BHC meeting website .      The theme of the meeting is "Money, Finance, and Capital." The Program Committee consists of David Sicilia (chair), University of Maryland; Christy Ford Chapin , University of Maryland-Baltimore County; Per Hansen , Copenhagen Business School; Naomi Lamoreaux , Yale University; Rory Miller , University of Liverpool; Julia C. Ott , New School for Social Research; and Mary O’Sullivan (BHC president), University of Geneva. Local arrangements have been overseen by Joshua Davis , University of Baltimore.      In addition to regular sessions, the meeting will feature the Krooss Prize Dissertation session; a plenary on "Baltimore in Business History," and two roundtable discussions: one on "Adventures in Financial Archives," and a second on "Teaching Financial History.&q

The Sixth Asian Historical Economics Conference (AHEC 2018) will be hosted by the Asia Global Institute and the Faculty of Business and Economics at the University of Hong Kong, in collaboration with the Asian Historical Economics Society , on September 21-22, 2018. The two-day conference will be held at Le Méridien Hotel in Hong Kong.      This meeting follows earlier conferences of the Asian Historical Economics Society in Venice (2008), Beijing (2010), Tokyo (2012), Istanbul (2014), and Seoul (2016). The conference aims to bring together researchers working on the economic history of all regions of Asia, as well as those comparing Asia with other regions. AHEC 2018 invites papers exploring various aspects of economic history. Participants in the AHEC are generally limited to holders of a Ph.D. and those currently in a doctoral program.      Interested scholars should submit an abstract (max. 1-page) together with paper(s) or session proposal(s) via the submission form linked fro

On March 2-3, 2018, professors Lee Alston, John Nye, and Barry Weingast will host a conference, sponsored by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, to consider the impact of Douglass North’s work on the discipline of economics: "The Life & Legacy of Douglass North." The conference, which celebrates the 25th anniversary of North's Nobel Prize in Economics, will be structured around five key periods in his career: 1) Cliometrics and Measurement; 2) Relative Prices, Property Rights, and Transaction Costs; 3) Institutions; 4) Belief and Cognition; and 5) Violence. Each theme will have a keynote lecture and a series of paper presentations.     Registration is now open. There is no registration fee, but attendees will be responsible for their own travel and lodging.

From Alexander Hamilton to the 2007-2008 financial crisis, the United States Treasury has faced wars, panics, and a rapidly changing American and global economy. To promote and preserve the history of this institution, the Treasury Historical Association (THA) invites essay submissions for the inaugural 1500 Penn Prize.      Named in honor of the location of the Treasury’s historic main building, the prize seeks to reward outstanding scholarship on the history and significance of the Treasury to American history—broadly conceived. The THA welcomes scholarly essays that cover any period of American history, as well as any aspect of the Treasury’s past, including studies of policies, politics, architecture, people, and culture. Essays will be judged by a panel of historians and Treasury experts.      The winner of this contest will receive a $250 honorarium as well as an invitation to speak at the THA’s Noontime Lecture Series. The THA will cover travel costs to Washington, DC, up t

At its 2018 annual meeting, the AHA will present a small number of  late-breaking sessions , which will explore either major, late-breaking controversies within the discipline or the relevance of history and historical thinking to public policy and culture related to current events.      Edward Balleisen, Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies, Duke University, will be chairing such a session. on January 5, 3:30-5:00 p.m., in the Blue Room of the Omni Shoreham: “Revolt against Regulation in the Time of Trump: Historical Perspectives.”  The panel includes Sally Katzen, former administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (in the Clinton Administration); Susan Dudley, former administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (in the George W. Bush Administration); Cary Coglianese, Edward B. Shils Professor of Law and professor of political science, University of Pennsylvania; Nelson Lichtenstein, Distinguished Professor of History, University of

A workshop on "Politics and State Finance in the Peripheries of the Global Economy in Historical Perspective" will take place at University College London on June 6-7, 2018. Keynote speakers will be Tim Besley (London School of Economics) and Larry Neal (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign). The deadline for paper submissions is December 15, 2017 . According to the organizers, the workshop is open to papers on any time range which focus on peripheries of Europe, Asia and Africa. . . . Proposed papers inter alia will explore topics of fiscal policy, long-term patterns of taxation and government spending, political economy of domestic/foreign debt and defaults, persistence and convergence of fiscal regimes, and the links between global finance and domestic politics. Interested participants are required submit a 500-word abstract and title together with their academic CV to history.debt@ucl.ac.uk . Participants will be invited to publish an extended abstract of their

The John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising and Marketing History , part of the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University, announces the availability of three grants for research travel to our collections: the Alvin Achenbaum travel grant, FOARE Fellowship for Outdoor Advertising Research, and the John Furr Fellowship for research in the J. Walter Thompson Co. Archives.        The John W. Hartman Center promotes the understanding of the social, cultural and historical influence of advertising and marketing through the collection of published and unpublished resources. Strengths of the collection include direct marketing and sales, outdoor advertising, women in the industry, trade industry association records, and the records of multiple advertising agencies and marketing firms.        Travel grants are available to faculty, graduate and undergraduate students, artists, and independent scholars with a research project that would benefit from ac

The American Historical Association has announced the winners of its awards for 2017 in advance of the 2018 meeting in Washington, D.C. Among them are two distinguished BHC members: Roger Horowitz , director of the program on Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library and long-time secretary treasurer of the Business History Conference, has been awarded the Dorothy Rosenberg Prize in the history of the Jewish diaspora for his book Kosher USA: How Coke Became Kosher and Other Tales of Modern Food (Columbia University Press, 2016). Patrick Fridenson , directeur d'études at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and former BHC trustee and past-president, was awarded the Honorary Foreign Member Prize for a foreign scholar who is distinguished in his or her field and who has “notably aided the work of American historians in the scholar's country.” The awards will be presented at the AHA meeting in January.

The Centre for the History of Retailing and Distribution (CHORD) will hold a workshop on May 22, 2018, at the University of Wolverhampton on  "Retailing, Architecture and Material Culture: Historical Perspectives." Submissions are invited that explore the architecture, material environment, objects and material culture of retailing and distribution. Papers focusing on any historical period or geographical area are welcome, as are reflections on methodology and / or theory. Both experienced and new speakers are welcome, including speakers without an institutional affiliation. Both individual papers and shorter, 10-minute work in progress presentations will be considered.      To submit a proposal, please send the title and an abstract of 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 March 2,  2018 .      For additional information, please see the full call for papers . Questions may b

The European Association for Banking and Financial History (EABH) has announced that its 2018 Annual Meeting will take place - in cooperation with the Fondazione 1563 per l'Arte e la Cultura della Compagnia di San Paolo - in Torino, Italy, on June 14-15, 2018. With the theme "The Social Aims of Finance," the conference will explore how financial institutions have tackled the question of their legitimacy and social usefulness by developing alternative goals and business forms for durable financial services.     The meeting will be accompanied by an archival workshop on 'good' archives. This workshop is designed for financial institutions' archivists, researchers and potential users and will reflect on the legacy of the social purposes that inspired the origins of many financial institutions and the role banks and finance played in society.      Please consult the full call for papers for additional details and a fuller explanation of the meeting theme. Pro

As we in the United States celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday, marketing professor Samantha Cross discusses "How Advertising Shaped Thanksgiving as We Know It" in "The Conversation." She and her colleagues studied 99 years of Thanksgiving ads in Good Housekeeping magazine to find out how the success of marketing campaigns accounts for our near-universal association of turkey, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie with the holiday.

The Doing History podcast, edited by Liz Covart and recently brought under the auspices of the Omohundro Institute for Early American History and Culture (OIEAHC), has been producing high-quality material for several years now. Recent episodes have been focusing on the American Revolution, and the last three topics may be of particular interest to economic and business historians working in the colonial America field: The Revolutionary Economy , featuring Serena Zabin of Carleton College, author of Dangerous Economies: Status and Commerce in Imperial New York (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009) The Politics of Tea , featuring Jane Merritt of Old Dominion University, author of The Trouble with Tea: The Politics of Consumption in the Eighteenth-Century Global Economy (Johns Hopkins University Press) Smuggling and the American Revolution , with guests including Wim Klooster, Fabricio Prado, and Christian Koot In addition to links provided with each episode, additional mate

The University of Bayreuth is holding a workshop on "Business and the Law: Historical Perspectives on Legal Change," which will take place on June 21-23, 2018. According to the organizers, The aim of the workshop is to understand legal change as a change in routines that affected the ways in which businesses and courts interpreted the "rules of the game." Such a change could manifest itself in written law or lead to a fundamentally different way of interpreting it. In both cases the focus needs to be on economic and legal practices, i.e. on the question what the law meant in its historical context and how it actually affected economic actions. We are looking for theoretical work as well as empirical case studies that help to shed light on the historical transformations of legal institutions at the intersection of businesses and the law. Travel costs and accommodation will be covered for the presenters of all accepted papers. The workshop will be organized as a

The editors of the BHC journal Enterprise & Society have announced a new initiative to expand the content of the journal by publishing an annual 5th issue on a special topic, to be delivered online. According to Andrew Popp, Enterprise & Society editor, the goal of the 5th issue is "to significantly enhance the reach and impact of business history by creating a space in which to explore inter-disciplinary dialogue and address very large scale problems in ways that are beyond the scope of conventional original research articles and typical thematically focused special issues." Here is more from the general announcement on the Cambridge University Press website: The new fifth issue, which will be published online, will be a special issue unlike most others. Rather than seeking original research articles the aim is to generate bold, ambitious, synthetic articles that will spark debate, inspire future lines of work, and broaden audiences. Each issue will focus eit

The European Business History Association (EBHA) will hold its next annual conference on September 6-8, 2018, in Ancona, Italy, hosted by the Università Politecnica delle Marche. The theme of the meeting will be "The Firm and The Sea: Chains, Flows and Connections."     According to the call for papers , The sea - whether considered as open ocean or as a mass of water bordered by land masses - is an enormous economic resource for mankind. Not only is it the principal way of transportation for goods and humans but it’s also a formidable source of food. Since we want to link the sea with the business unit (the firm, as well as other organizational units like clusters, networks and global value chains) the focus of the next EBHA conference will be on two units of analysis that are both extremely relevant for the sea as well as economic resources - ships and harbors.  Topics without ties to the sea or the firm will be given consideration, "provided that the proposal

New and forthcoming books of interest to business and economic historians, October-December 2017 (and a few earlier titles we missed): Leslie Berlin, Troublemakers: Silicon Valley's Coming of Age (Simon & Schuster, November 2017) Regina Lee Blaszczyk, Fashionability: Abraham Moon and the Creation of British Cloth for the Global Market (Manchester University Press, October 2017) Regina Lee Blaszczyk and Uwe Spiekermann, eds., Bright Modernity: Color, Commerce, and Consumer Culture (Palgrave, October 2017) Michael R. Cohen, Cotton Capitalists: American Jewish Entrepreneurship in the Reconstruction Era (NYU Press, December 2017) Pierre-Yves Donzé and Rika Fujioka, eds., Global Luxury: Organizational Change and Emerging Markets since the 1970s ( Palgrave, October 2017) Anne Fleming, City of Debtors: A Century of Fringe Finance (Harvard University Press, December 2017) Sarah Ruth Hammond, God's Businessmen: Entrepreneurial Evangelicals in Depression and War

The next annual meeting of the Economic History Association (EHA) will take place in Montreal, Canada, on September 7-9, 2018. The theme for EHA 2018 is “‘From Plague, Famine, and War, Save us, O Lord’: Shocks and Disasters in Economic History.” As the call for papers explains: The age-old prayer refers to disasters that have blighted lives throughout history. The theme is an invitation for papers on the broader economic-historical aspects of such crises—environ- mental, climatic, humanitarian, economic, and other. . . . The theme of the 2018 meetings embraces topics such as the economic causes and consequences of wars and of other disasters; comparative and interdisciplinary analyses of famines and plagues from classical antiquity to modern times; analyses of the institutions that attempted to counter them; of their proximate and remoter causes (e.g. climate change); of their changing incidence over time; of the welfare gains from their eradication; and of their short- and long

A run-down of sessions of particular interest to business historians that have current calls for papers listed on the WEHC website : "Centennial Enterprises as Sources of Innovation in Emerging Economies" "Classifying the Merchandises of the Waves of Globalisation (17th-20th Century)" "International Financial Institutions: Multilateral Investment and Development Banks since the Second World War" "Lessons from Insurance History: Markets, Regulation and Globalization" "The Institutional Foundations of Long-Distance Trade before Industrialization" "The Memory of Financial Crises across the Waves of Globalisation" Individual paper submissions to accepted sessions with open CFPs should be sent by email to organizers mentioned in the session description.

The next World Economic History Congress (WEHC) will be held in Boston, Massachusetts, on July 29-August 3, 2018. Panel proposals accepted during the second round are now online and are listed together with the first-round proposals. Panels from either round that still have open calls for papers are indicated in the listing.    Students who have completed their dissertations between June 2014 and August 2017 are encouraged to submit their theses for the dissertation panel/competition . Dissertations will be shortlisted and considered for awards in three separate categories: Ancient/medieval/early modern period; the long 19th century; and the 20th century. The three finalists in each category will be invited to present their work in the dissertation panel. Theses written in languages other than English will also be considered, although the abstract needs to be in English. The deadline for electronic submissions of the theses, along with information on past and current affiliation

Through its fellowships and travel grants, the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation supports research projects that present creative approaches to the study of invention and innovation in American society. Projects may include (but are not limited to) historical research and documentation projects resulting in dissertations, publications, exhibitions, educational initiatives, documentary films, or other multimedia products. A comprehensive catalog of objects, manuscripts, images, and research materials held by the National Museum of American History (and other Smithsonian units) is available on the Smithsonian website .     The Lemelson Center invites applications covering a broad spectrum of research topics in the history of technology, invention, and innovation, but especially encourages project proposals whose topics align with one (or more) of the Lemelson Center’s strategic research and programmatic areas, including: (1) the cultivation and training of inv

The Newberry Library has organized hundreds of items among its large holdings into "Collections for the Classroom." Materials are divided by topic (for example, "Commodities and the Transformation of the American Landscape"; "The New Deal in Chicago and the Midwest"), but items may also be browsed alphabetically and can be sorted by date, author, or title. Users can log in to create their own lesson plans by assembling Newberry materials of their choosing; the results will be stored as a unique URL.      For a full list of the Newberry's many online exhibits and topical digital publications, please see the Newberry website .

The 2018 Association of Business Historians (ABH) annual conference will be held on June 29-30, 2018, at the Open University Business School in Milton Keynes. The conference theme is "Pluralistic Perspectives of Business History: Gender, Class, Ethnicity, Religion." The conference "aims to explore the impact of gender, social class, ethnicity, and religion on business success, fraud, funding, financial markets, corporate governance, and corporate social responsibility."     The program committee will consider both individual papers and entire panels. Individual paper proposals should include a one-page (up to 300-word) abstract and one-page curriculum vitae (CV). Panel proposals should include a cover letter stating the rationale for the panel and the name of its contact person; one-page (300 word) abstract and author’s CV for each paper; and a list of preferred panel chairs and commentators with contact information. The deadline for submissions is January 15,

The European Association for Banking and Financial History (EABH) is sponsoring a one-day workshop at the Westin Zagreb Hotel in Zagreb, Croatia, on November 10, 2017, on "The Data Dilemma: A Risk or an Asset?" According to the organizers: The amount of data about the finance sector is growing exponentially and storing it is becoming easier. Businesses are excited about the commercial possibilities of ‘Big Data’; academics are relishing the research potential of deep data archives and regulators are hoping for a fuller view of systemic risk and stability. Will it all turn out well though? The current reality of massive data stores is often no more than massive cost and complexity. The workshop will explore how we got here with data and where we go next.  The program is available on the EABH website, and registration information is here . The workshop will run in parallel to the international conference "INFuture 2017: Integrating ICT in Society," meeting i

The latest issue of the online journal Common-Place (issue 17, no. 4) has two pieces of direct interest to business historians. First, in "The Business of Building Books," Paul Erickson explores the value of thinking about books "as objects that were processed, stored, and packaged by industrialists," and that could be used "as payments to workers who labored on their manufacture."     In the book review section, Courtney Fullilove examines Gergely Baics, Feeding Gotham: The Political Economy of Geography and Food in New York, 1790-1860 , in an essay entitled "Slaughterhouse Rules: The Deregulation of Food Markets in Antebellum New York."

The 43rd Economic and Business History Society (EBHS) Annual Conference will be held at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, on May 30-June 2, 2018. The general theme is "Early Modern Origins of Growth and Business." However, proposals for presentations on any aspect of ancient to recent economic, social or business history are welcome, as are proposals for whole panels. Submissions from graduate students and non-academic affiliates are encouraged.     Proposals should include an abstract of no more than 500 words and contact details. The deadline for submission of proposals is February 15, 2018 . Proposals may be submitted through the EBHS website at www.ebhsoc.org (or by email to ebhs2018@ebhsoc.org ). Please consult the complete call for papers for more details about the meeting and submission procedures.     Questions should be addressed to Program Chair Olli Turunen, oturunen@wisc.edu , or EBHS 2018 President Jari Eloranta, elorantaj@appstate.edu .

The journal Management and Organizational History has issued a call for papers for a special issue on "Making Managers." Guest editors are Rolv Petter Amdam, Mathias Kipping, and Jacqueline McGlade. They state: The issue intends to fill an important gap in the current literature on the history of management education, which has largely been centered on organizational development narratives, i.e. the rise of business schools, the global spread of the American model, business-based academic disciplines, etc. We therefore invite papers that to chronicle the actual preparation of managers in all types, venues and forms; address questions and perspectives that have not been addressed; and cover geographical areas or industries and activities that are not in focus in the extant literature. For a much fuller explanation of possible topics and the submission process, please see the journal website . The deadline for submissions is March 31, 2018 .

Business History Explorer (BHE) is a bibliography covering the history of UK businesses and the industries to which they belong. At the end of 2016 it contained  c 45,000 entries. Its prime purpose is to assist researchers in locating historical information about specific businesses. The bibliography includes monographs, periodical articles, theses, chapters in multi-author works, unpublished works, and selected product and employment literature. The database is being continuously updated in order to include new publications and to plug gaps in the existing constituency. According to the project website, "Many gaps remain in periodical article coverage and priority is being given in 2017 to addressing this."     One can search the database to get a sense of the contents without charge, but viewing the results returned requires payment of an annual fee, substantially discounted for BAC members and affiliates.        The BHE is the successor to Francis Goodall,  A Bibliogr

News about and by historians of business continues to pop up in the general media. [Note that some of these links may lead to material that is gated, but readers with access to university or public libraries should be able to gain entry.] In an opinion piece in the wake of the Google employee memo about gender in the industry, Marie Hicks drew on her recent research to write "Women were foundational to the field of computing" for the Washington Post . Marc Levinson wrote an op-ed in the New York Times on "Can Amazon Be the Next Apple?" Josh Lauer appeared on NPR's Marketplace, discussing his new book, Creditworthy: A History of Consumer Surveillance and Financial Identity in America . An essay on the Bank of England blog on Britain's early efforts to finance the First World War , written by Michael Anson, Norma Cohen, Alastair Owens and Daniel Todman, received widespread coverage in the UK press; see, for example, the Financial Times . Ed Balle

The Institut historique allemand in Paris is holding a two-day workshop on March 19-20, 2018, on the subject "Contextualizing Bankruptcy: Publicity, Space and Time (Europe, 17th to 19th c.)." The organizers [Natacha Coquery (LARHRA, Lyon 2, IUF); Jürgen Finger (DHI Paris); Mark Sven Hengerer (LMU Munich)] write in their call for papers: Although bankruptcy is a rather exceptional situation in the life of a merchant, it has explanatory power for routines of economic stakeholders. Considering the long, non-uniform and unsteady transition from merchant capitalism to industrial and financial capitalism, we suggest to start a dialog between modernistes and contemporanéistes . The workshop focuses on the various forms of contextualizing business failure and puts forward three major research axes: Covering and uncovering/secrecy and publicity; economic space and area of jurisdiction; temporal narratives of (in)solvency. Those interested in presenting should send an abstract of

A number of history organizations and groups now publish active and informative blogs, which often include material of interest to business and economic historians. A (far from comprehensive) sampling: American Antiquarian Society: Past Is Present American Historical Association: AHA Today Centre for Imperial and Global History, Exeter: Imperial & Global Forum    Economic History Society: The Long Run Global Urban History Hagley Library and Museum: Research and Collection News Legal History Blog   National Museum of American History, O Say Can You See? (filtered for business history) New-York Historical Society: From the Stacks   Organization of American Historians: Process Organizational History Network Society for Historians of the Early Republic (SHEAR): The Panorama The Junto (early Americanists) Urban History Association: The Metropole  In addition, several individual historians manage blogs of interest: Ed Ayers, et al., Bunk: Rewiring American Histo

On November 10, 2017, the Hagley Museum and Library will offer a conference on "Hidden Capitalism: Beyond, Below, and Outside the Visible Market." The conference was initiated by Lisa Jacobson (UC Santa Barbara) and Ken Lipartito (Florida International University); they were joined on the program committee by Roger Horowitz (Hagley Museum and Library) and Wendy Woloson (Rutgers University). Session titles are: "Business in the shadows"; "Liminal spaces and global order";"Capitalisms in collision"; and "Regulating alternative markets."     For additional information, please contact Carol Lockman at clockman@hagley.org .

The 2018 BHC Doctoral Colloquium in Business History will be held in conjunction with the BHC annual meeting . This prestigious workshop, funded by Cambridge University Press, will take place in Baltimore on Wednesday, April 4, and Thursday, April 5. 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 and from any country. Topics may range from the early modern era to the present, and explore societies across the globe. 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, due by November 15, 2017 via email to BHC@Hagley.org , should include: a statement of interest; CV; preliminary or final dissertation prospectus (10-15 pages); and a letter of su

A selection of recent (ungated) reviews of books in business and economic history: Charles Thompson reviews Nicolas Barreyre, Gold and Freedom: The Political Economy of Reconstruction , for Reviews in History. Aaron L. Chin reviews Gautham Rao, National Duties: Custom Houses and the Making of the American State for Common-Place. John Kampfner reviews David Kynaston, Till Time’s Last Sand: A History of the Bank of England, 1694-2013 for The Guardian . Bernard Attard reviews Marc Flandreau, Anthropologists in the Stock Exchange: A Financial History of Victorian Science for EH.Net. Larry Neal reviews Youssef Cassis, Richard S. Grossman, and Catherine R. Schenk, eds., T he Oxford Handbook of Banking and Financial History for EH.Net. Jean-Pierre Dormois reviews Robert Gordon, The Rise and Fall of American Growth , for Books & Ideas.net. Erik Benson reviews Richard R. John and Kim Phillips-Fein, eds., Capital Gains: Business and Politics in Twentieth-Century Ameri