The Exchange

The ninth Accounting History International Conference will be held in Verona, Italy, on September 6-7, 2017, hosted by the Department of Business Administration at the University of Verona. The theme for the meeting will be "Accounting and Governance in Diverse Settings." According to the call for papers : While papers will be accepted across the full range of accounting history topics and methodological and theoretical perspectives, authors are encouraged to address topics relevant to the conference theme. . . . This involves studying accounting and governance in private, public and not-for-profit contexts, including charitable bodies, mutual societies, professional bodies and family businesses. Papers, written in English and complying with the Accounting History manuscript style, should be submitted in Word format no later than March 1, 2017 March 20, 2017 , to verona.ahic@rmit.edu.au . All papers will be subject to a double-blind refereeing process and will be p...

On the "Age of Revolutions" blog, Bertie Mandelbrot discusses "Trans-Imperial Geographies of Rum Production and Circulation." Very sorry to report the death last month of Ann Johnson (1965-2016), professor of Science and Technology Studies at Cornell University. Her research focused on the history of engineering and the way engineers work in a modern industrial society. The "Atlas Obscura" blog features a story about Martha Matilda Harper , "The Greatest Businesswomen You've Never Heard Of," including commentary by Harper biographer Jane Plitt. The German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C., has created a blog, "History of Knowledge" ; its editors are Mark Stoneman and Kerstin von der Krone. Roger Horowitz's book, Kosher USA , has been recognized by Choice as an Outstanding Academic Book for 2016, only 10 percent of the 7,000 books reviewed by Choice last year achieved this distinction. Kosher USA also has rec...

A workshop will be held at the Henley Business School on March 10-11, 2017, to present and discuss contributions to a special issue of Business History that will be a festschrift to honor the career of Professor Leslie Hannah. The program has been posted on the Henley website.     Inquiries may be directed to Valerie Woodley at the Center for International Business and History at the Henley Business School, University of Reading. Attendance is free, though attendees are required to register by March 5; please email Valerie Woodley to do so. Hat tip to Andrew Smith, "The Past Speaks."

The 2017 annual meeting of the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) will be held on October 26-30 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  The call for proposals for open sessions has just been published. According to the announcement: Open session proposals should be submitted in a single PDF or Word file to the secretary’s office ( SHOT.Secretariaat@tue.nl ). The secretary’s office will post the proposals on the SHOT website. To join a proposed panel from the Open Sessions list, contact the organizer for that panel, not the Program Committee. Open Session organizers will then assemble full panel sessions and submit them to SHOT by the end of the regular call for papers on March 31, 2017 . The Program Committee will review the resulting fully formed session proposals, whether traditional or unconventional, for quality and adherence to SHOT standards of gender, geographic, and institutional diversity. The deadline for open session proposals is March 15, 2017 .

The Jefferson Scholars/Hagley Library Fellowship in Business and Politics (formerly the Miller Center/Hagley Library Dissertation Fellowship) supports completion of exceptional dissertations for which the Hagley’s Library research materials constitute a significant source and that connect with the mission of the National Fellowship Program. For many decades the Hagley Library has been the preeminent business history library in the United States, with over seven miles of manuscript materials, 300,000 published sources, and more than two million visual images. Hagley also sponsors significant scholarly programming, including seminars, conferences, and lectures pertaining to the relationship between business and politics. It is the administrative headquarters of the Business History Conference, the principal academic organization of business historians in the United States. More information on Hagley’s collections is available here . Like other National Fellows, the Business and ...

The issue of slave insurance policies has recently been in the news. The New York Times published an article last month, "Insurance Policies on Slaves: New York Life's Complicated Past ," while Michael Ralph and William Rankin just published their research data in Foreign Policy , "Decoder: The Slave Insurance Market" (with more information available on Rankin's "Radical Cartography" website ).      In 2000, the state of California commissioned a study on the topic, canvassing a number of life insurance companies and requesting a search of their records. This resulted in a 2002 report that outlined the information unearthed, which covered several states. In addition to the report itself, the Department of Insurance published a cache of documents on its website, collectively referred to as the "Slavery Era Insurance Registry": a chart organized by names of insured slaves ; a table of slaveholders who had policies on their slaves; a...

A few listings of interest, featuring business history and historians: "The Enigma of Chinese Business Records" is a discussion on the NEP-His blog by Joyman Lee of the paper "Discovering Economic History in Footnotes: The Story of the Tong Taisheng Merchant Archive (1790-1850)" by Debin Ma and Weipeng Yuan. Joseph Adelman, who teaches history at Framingham State University and researches the history of the printing business and the postal service in colonial America, was highlighted in John Fea's "The Way of Improvement Leads Home" blog for the achievement of "Bringing the 'Hamilton' Soundtrack to the History Syllabus."   Readers can find the syllabus here . Marc Levinson has a blog in which he discusses current affairs in light of his scholarship, including his recent book An Extraordinary Time . Over at "The Junto," Stephen Campbell writes about "Reimagining the Second Bank of the United States in Early A...

A (by no means all-inclusive) list of new and forthcoming books of interest to business and economic historians. For bibliographical reasons, the list is divided between titles published in December 2016 and those published or forthcoming in January and February 2017. December 2016 Amy M. Froide , Silent Partners: Women as Public Investors during Britain's Financial Revolution, 1690-1750 (Oxford University Press, December 2016) Hans Otto Frøland, Mats Ingulstad , and Jonas Scherner , eds., Industrial Collaboration in Nazi-Occupied Europe: Norway in Context (Palgrave, December 2016) Richard R. John and Kim Phillips-Fein , eds., Capital Gains: Business and Politics in Twentieth-Century America (University of Pennsylvania Press, December 2016) Laurence B. Mussio , A Vision Greater than Themselves: The Making of the Bank of Montreal, 1817-2017 (McGill-Queens University Press, December 2016) Marina Nicoli , The Rise and Fall of the Italian Film Industry (Routledge, ...

The Business History Conference (BHC) will hold its 2017 meeting in Denver, Colorado, on March 30-April 1. The theme for the meeting is "Civilizations"; for a full discussion of that theme, please see the call for papers . The program committee consists of Susie Pak (chair), St. John's University; Walter Friedman (BHC president), Harvard Business School; Eric D. Hilt, Wellesley College; Jessica Burch, Tougaloo College; Caitlin Rosenthal, University of California, Berkeley; and Lars Heide, Copenhagen Business School.       The preliminary program for this year's meeting has now been posted on the BHC website. In addition to many sessions of interest, it features two plenary sessions. The opening plenary is "The Cultures of a Business Civilization," chaired by Laura Phillips Sawyer with discussion by Caitlin Rosenthal; presenters are Naomi Lamoreaux, Andrew Popp, Louis Galambos, and Marc Levinson. The second is "Keywords in American Econom...

We are deeply saddened to report the death of Christopher Kobrak, Wilson/Currie Chair of Canadian Business & Financial History and long-time BHC member; he died this week in Paris. He was on the board of the European Business History Association, and served as a trustee of the Business History Conference, 2007-10. He worked on the BHC Finance Committee, 2010-2013 and was serving on the BHC's Hagley Prize Committee at the time of his death. He was also vice-chairman of the Canadian Business History Society and active in promoting its growth.      Fellow business historian Andrew Smith has published an appreciation on his blog, "The Past Speaks," that provides an overview of Chris Kobrak's background and academic work. We will update this post with further details and links to obituaries and memorials as they become available.    Jan. 13: Jeff Fear has added an appreciation on the ABH site.    Jan. 14: "Remembering Chris Kobrak," dean of Rotm...

The Centre for the History of Retailing and Distribution invites submissions for a workshop on "Retailing, Distribution, and Reputation: A Historical Perspective," to be held on May 23, 2017 at the University of Wolverhampton.      Papers focusing on any historical period or geographical area are welcome. Both experienced and new speakers are invited, including speakers without an institutional affiliation. Potential speakers are welcome to discuss their ideas with the organizer before submission (please see below). Individual papers are usually 20 minutes in length, followed by 10 minutes for questions and discussion. Proposals for shorter, 10- minute ‘work in progress’ presentations may also be presented. To submit a proposal, please send title and abstract of c.300 to 400 words, specifying type of presentation to Laura Ugolini, at l.ugolini@wlv.ac.uk by March 3, 2017 . For suggestions of topics and additional details, please see the call for papers . ...

The American Historical Association (AHA) will hold its 2018 meeting in Washington, D.C., on January 4-7. The theme will be "Race, Ethnicity and Nationalism in Global Perspective"; the program committee co-chairs are Antoinette Burton and Rick Halpern. The organizers are hoping for a "rich and varied set of proposals" that will illuminate "how local and global ideas and practices of race, ethnicity, and other forms of difference have intersected over time in ways that have helped both to define the idea of the nation and to move it beyond its limits." The AHA encourages submission on the program theme, but the committee does not consider relevance to that theme in making acceptance decisions.       The AHA has extensive guidelines under which the program committee operates; there is also a FAQ . Only proposals for complete sessions will be considered. Please see the complete call for papers for additional information.      All propo...

As folks set off to attend the 2017 American Historical Association meeting in Denver, which takes place January 5-8, a quick reminder of BHC-sponsored sessions and other program items of interest: 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. 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. We also listed a number of sessions of particular interest earlier on The Exchange.  A few additional sessions and individual papers in business and economic history (not an exhaus...

Word comes that Joyce Appleby, professor emerita of history at UCLA, passed away on December 23 at the age of 87. Professor Appleby was well known among economic historians for her work, especially Ideology and Economic Thought in Seventeenth-Century England (1978); Capitalism and a New Social Order: The Republican Vision of the 1790s (1984); and The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism (2010). In 1996, she helped establish the History News Service with James M. Banner to “encourage more historians to bring their knowledge to bear on public affairs.” A full academic biography is available on her website at UCLA.     Appreciations of her life and scholarship can be found around the blogosphere at The Junto (by Michael Hattem); The Way of Improvement Leads Home (by John Fea); and The Faculty Lounge (by Alfred Brophy).     Many interviews and talks by Professor Appleby are available on-line; a list can be found here .     Updates: o...