A conference on "Labour Markets and Living Standards in Britain, 1870-1960" was held at the University of Essex in June. The program, with links to some of the papers, is available online.
ESRICanada has produced an interesting GIS map showing the growth of Canadian railroads, 1835-1995.
And Alisha Knight has posted "Putting Them on the Map: Mapping the Agents of the Colored Co-operative Publishing Company," a GIS visualization that traces this Boston company's expansion across the country.
Noam Maggor discusses "Brahmin Boston and the Politics of Interconnectedness" on the Global Urban History blog, drawing on his recent book, Brahmin Capitalism.
This year's Hakluyt Society symposium, taking place at the University of Kent on September 11-12, 2017, is on the topic "Trading Companies and Travel Literature"; the full program is available on the Society's blog.
On his blog "Marginal Revolution," Tyler Cowan wonders when/if there would have been an industrial revolution in the absence of the British one.
On "Five Books," Peter Temin discusses his selection of favorite books in economic history.
Economic history as a subject has been the topic of several recent essays:
- Tyler Cowen discusses the current "blossoming" of economic history on "Marginal Revoluton"
- Vincent Geloso, on the blog "Notes on Liberty," has a long essay on "Doing Economic History."
- On Books&Ideas.net, Guillaume Calafat and Éric Monnet discuss "The Return of Economic History?"
On "Pro-Market," the blog of the Stigler Center at the University of Chicago, Prateek Raj considers "How Markets in Europe Opened Up as Guild Monopolies Declined in the Sixteenth Century."
In a well-illustrated Bloomberg article, "Inside the Vault with Canada's Oldest Banking Secrets," Doug Alexander interviews Bank of Montreal archivist Yolaine Toussaint about the archives' holdings.
In his blog, Nuno Palma considers "How important was colonial trade for the rise of Europe?" [There is also an audio discussion with "Economics Detective Radio" here.]
Duke University's Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library has announced the acquisition of a collection of marketing and promotional posters directed at African Americans, 1967-1984. [Note: the collection is not yet digitized.]
The American Philosophical Society has digitized Benjamin Franklin's Post Office account book, 1748-1752.
A number of journals have recently published special issues and sections of interest, some of it open access, at least temporarily:
Articles in the latest issue of Financial History Review, on "The Financial and Monetary History of South-East Europe," are temporarily open access.
Several essays in the Winter 2016 issue of the Business History Review are temporarily open access, including a special section on Management Consulting, introduced by Christopher McKenna. And the Summer 2017 issue makes available Jeff Fear's memorialization of Christopher Kobrak.
And, although not freely available, the recent issue of Business History (vol. 58, no. 8) is a special issue on the "Narrative Turn and Business History," including essays by Pamela Walker Laird and Andrew Popp and Susanna Fellman.
Similarly, the May 2017 issue of Continuity and Change is a special number on "Merchants and Commercial Conflicts in Europe, 1250–1600." It is not open access. Many readers will be able to access these materials through institutional subscriptions.