The Exchange

Ph.D. students and junior postdoctoral researchers in economic history are invited to present their ongoing research to an international audience with a poster at the World Economic History Congress, which will take place in Boston on July 29-August 3, 2018. Historical applications in any field of economics or cognate social sciences, business history, demographic history, environmental history, global and world history, social history, urban history, methodological approaches to historical research, history of economics and economic thought, and other related fields are welcome. Digital posters will also be considered, pending space constraints. The deadline for submission is January 31, 2018 . Please see the full WEHC announcement about posters .      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 a...

The 37th conference of the Portuguese Economic and Social History Association will be held at the University of Madeira, Colégio dos Jesuítas, Funchal, on November 17-18, 2017. The theme of the meeting will be "The Atlantic in Economic and Social History." As the call for papers states, The history of the Atlantic broke with the frontiers of historiography based on the nation-state’s approach, allowing thereafter the possibility of comparing processes in the long run. . . . The processes originating in the Atlantic have tended to be analysed as interactions between people, institutions and economies in a interconnected world.  Proposals for either panels or individual presentations will be considered. The APHES Conference is open to the submission of papers on any topic in economic and social history.     Paper proposals should include an abstract between 400 and 500 words, with the description of the topic, objectives, theoretical framework, empirical supp...

News and notes of interest from around the web: From KILN , a fascinating shipping map for 2012; run the video to see types of ships, cargos, and other information. W. E. B. Du Bois prepared a number of charts for the Negro Exhibit of the American Section at the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1900 to show the economic and social progress of African Americans since emancipation; they are available on the Library of Congress website , and there is a story about them here . Edward Balleisen can be seen speaking about his book Fraud: American History from Barnum to Madoff   (Princeton University Press, 2017) at the National History Center in Washington, D.C. And he talks about his research for the Duke University Ways and Means podcast . And Marie Hicks is interviewed on the New Books Network podcast about her recently published  Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing (MIT Press, 2017). The BT Digital Archive...

In addition to the Hagley and Gomory book prizes previously featured , the Business History Conference presented the following awards and prizes at its annual meeting in Denver, Colorado: Lifetime Achievement Award: Naomi Lamoreaux , Stanley B. Resor Professor of Economics & History, Yale University Herman E. Krooss Prize, for the best dissertation: Gerardo Con Diaz , Yale University, 2016 "Intangible Inventions:  A History of Software Patenting in the United States, 1945-1985" K. Austin Kerr Prize for the best first paper presented at a BHC meeting by a new scholar: Kelly Kean Sharp , “No Free Market: The Enslaved Marketwomen and Butchers of Charleston's Centre Market Stalls” Philip Scranton Prize, for the best article in the 2016 volume of Enterprise and Society : Petri Paju and Thomas Haigh , "IBM Rebuilds Europe: The Curious Case of the Transnational Typewriter," no. 2 (June 2016): 265-300. Mira Wilkins Prize, for the best article in the ...

The program for the next CHORD ( Centre for the History of Retailing and Distribution ) workshop, which will take place on May 23, 2017, at Wolverhampton University, has now been posted. The program, constructed around the workshop theme of "Retailing, Distribution, and Reputation: Historical Perspectives," contains links to abstracts for all the papers.     For registration and other useful information, please consult the workshop website .

The New York Public Library is digitizing its collection of New York City Directories , 1786 through 1922/3, serving them free through the  NYPL Digital Collections portal. The first group, 1849-1903, is already available. Directories have long been an important tool for business historians, recording the names and addresses of residents, of  churches, businesses, schools, police stations, courts, and other government offices, as well as individual names associated with those institutions. City directories contain much more than lists of names and addresses. They record the price of travel and postage, the kinds of occupations undertaken in the city, the layout of streets, and at what time the sun was predicted to rise and set. . . . In addition to textual information, city directories feature many images, including maps, illustrations of buildings, and advertisements, occasionally printed on colored or decorative paper. Directories record the city's built and ...

The Canadian Journal of History/Annales canadiennes d'histoire has issued a call for papers on the topic "The Material Realities of Energy Histories" for a special issue. According to the organizers Energy history has grown considerably from a largely overlooked sub-field to an important and relevant line of historical enquiry. Responding to the realization that human energy use has been directly responsible for monumental social, cultural, political, economic, and environmental changes, such as industrialization, urbanization, global warming, and the onset of the Anthropocene, historians have begun to embrace the need to understand better how energy structured human societies. The proposed essays "should explore topics that address the transnational dimensions and multiple scales of the material realities and environmental consequences of energy production, distribution, and consumption in any time period."     Submissions (a 250-300 word abstract) sho...

The UCLA Center for 17th- & 18th-Century Studies will hold a conference on May 5-6, 2017, on "Coins of the Realm: Money, Value, and Sovereignty in the Early Modern Atlantic." According to the organizer, Andrew Apter of UCLA, The conference addresses key relationships between money-forms and political authority during major transitions in the British Atlantic economy associated with the Stuart Restoration, the financial revolution, the Board of Trade and Plantations, and the Royal African Company. Of central importance is the Great Recoinage of 1696, which attempted to restore England’s national currency by realigning the nominal values of coins with their material worth as gold and silver. . . . Papers will draw on cases from England, the West Indies, colonial North America, and West Africa to highlight emergent connections between monetary value and political sovereignty in the early modern Atlantic. The program and registration information are available on the...

As part of ongoing efforts to add content to the BHC website, we are in the process of adding to the files of annual meeting programs. We are missing some early years, and so we send out this request for information. Years needed are 1954 (Northwestern University) 1954 (University of Michigan) [1955] no meeting 1956 (Indiana University) 1957 [no meeting] 1958 (State Historical Society, Wisconsin) 1959 (University of Illinois) 1960 (Marquette University) 1961 (Purdue University) 1963 (Northwestern University) 1964 (Indiana University) 1965 (Kent State University) 1970 (University of Iowa) 1971 (Oberlin College) 1972 (Loyola University) 1974 (Hagley Museum and Library) 1975 (Northwestern University) We would be grateful if readers who have copies of any of these programs would get in touch with Pat Denault ( pat.denault@gmail.com ). We'll let folks know when the current batch of older programs is uploaded. In the meantime, all programs, 2017-2003, are linked fro...

As part of its 2017 annual meeting, the European Association for Banking and Financial History (EABH), in cooperation with BNP Paribas and Banque Lombard Odier, will hold a conference on June 23, 2017, entitled "Legacy of Finance: The Haute-Banque in the World from the 19th to the 21st Century." According to the organizers: The haute banque emerged as a private banking elite in France during the Restoration period. Haute banque institutions were well respected and dealt with major international business and state affairs. They declined and vanished after the World Wars of the 20th century. Now, the haute banque is having a comeback in the 21st century. How did this happen? and why? The full program is available on the EABH website, as is a listing of all the organization's events . Registration is open at https://2017eabh.eventbrite.co.uk . Early bird tickets for non-members are available until April 15 .      The full meeting will commence on June 22 w...

At last week's annual meeting in Denver, Colorado, the Business History Conference awarded its two book prizes. The Hagley Prize for the best book in business history in the previous year was awarded to Mark R. Wilson of the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, for Destructive Creation: American Business and the Winning of World War II (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016). The Gomory Prize , made possible by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, recognizes historical work on the effects of business enterprises on the economic conditions of the countries in which they operate. In a first, Mark R. Wilson was the co-recipient of this prize as well. The co-winner was Johan Mathew of Rutgers University, for Margins of the Market: Trafficking and Capitalism across the Arabian Sea (University of California Press, 2016). The Gomory committee also awarded an honorable mention, to William N. Goetzmann, for Money Changes Everything: How Finance Made Civilization Possible (Pr...