The Exchange

Join us at noon on Friday, 23 October 2020 for a special digital version of the Inquire Capitalism’s Research in Progress Luncheon Seminar (lunch not required)  Never Enough: The Evolution of U.S. Defense Contractor Policy, 1950s-2010s Dr. Mark Wilson, University of North Carolina, Charlotte In the decades after World War II U.S. military authorities believed, as did many corporate executives, that as the defense sector became more privatized, profit margins needed to rise, to attract sufficient private investment into the defense sector. Defense officials were attempting to navigate a challenging problem in Cold War political economy: how to compete with the Soviet Union (which could command huge public investments in defense without any regard to profit), while relying substantially, and increasingly, on for-profit firms and profit-seeking investors.  It was often a quixotic project, stymied by unanticipated events and unintended consequences, including contractors’ inabilit...

  Call for Papers AHA 2022 in New Orleans Deadline: February 15th, 2021 More about the AHA meetings here: https://www.historians.org/aha22

H. Krooss Prize for Best Dissertation in Business History  Deadline: November 14, 2020 https://thebhc.org/krooss This prize consists of a $500 award (endowed) and a plaque. Only dissertations written in English will be considered. The Secretary-Treasurer will post notices about the prize in suitable newsletters, journals, guides, electronic media, and in the BHC's call for conference papers. Any dissertation in business history completed in the three calendar years immediately prior to the annual meeting can be nominated or considered, but may be submitted only once for the committee's consideration. The deadline for proposals for the Krooss prize is November 14, 2020. Nominations (or self-nominations) are to consist of a cover letter, the dissertation abstract, and the author's c.v. and are to be uploaded using this form: krooss-prize-nomination . The prize committee is to consist of three members, one of whom will be the chair. Each member serves a three-year term, rotati...

NEW BOOKS IN BUSINESS HISTORY SUMMER 2020 Coffeeland: One Man’s Dark Empire and the Making of Our Favo rite Drug , by Augustine Sedgewick. An audio sample is available here , and an interview with the author in the podcast show Who Makes Cents is available here . How the Suburbs Were Segregated: Developers and the Business of Exclusionary Housing, 1890-1960 , by Paige Glotzer. For an interview with the author in the podcast show Who Makes Cents click here . William Quinn's and John D. Turner's Boom and Bust: A Global History of Financial Bubbles came out in August 2020. The TOC is available here .    Forging Global Fordism: Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and the Contest over the Industrial Order by Stefan J. Link.  Nate Holdren's Injury Impoverished: Workplace Accidents, Capitalism, and Law in the Progressive Era came out in April of 2020. For a TOC visit this link . There is more information and discussion on the book  The Labor and Working-Class History Association b...

[A message from BHC President Neil Rollings] The BHC 2021 annual meeting will be a virtual meeting The call for papers is being revised in line with this and the new deadline for the submission of proposals is   14 November 2020 .   Dear BHC members    I hope you are all well and I apologise for the length of this email but I believe it is necessary.    Thank you to all of you who made the effort to complete the member survey about the 2021 conference . With 139 responses it gave us a clear insight into the attitudes of the membership which gave us confidence to decide how to proceed. For anyone interested the summary results from the survey can be found at   https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1M0JS2QfhOd0jVoBlsbRsi-361rF6Kj9UNJUZditTh9Y/edit?usp=sharing . Thank you also to those who engaged in email correspondence associated with the survey.    In the light of the responses the Program Committee recommended to the BHC trustees, who agreed, that...

Virtual Roundtable— "Making Money American: The Monetary Regimes of the New United States" Thursday, October 1, 2020, 11:00 am-1:00 pm Register here The Rhodes Center for International Economics and Finance at Brown University is pleased to announce a virtual roundtable on new directions in the history of money in the Early Republic United States. This event will take place on Thursday, October 1 from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm eastern. The roundtable will address the history of money as an emerging interdisciplinary field; explore emerging conversations at the intersection of history, law, economics, and political economy; and consider how the distinctive monetary regime of the new United States broadens our understanding of money as a historical project. Panelists include: Christine Desan, Harvard University Jane Knodell, University of Vermont Jeffrey Sklansky, University of Illinois at Chicago Although this event is open to the public, registration is required. You can sign up an...

Call for Applications Secretary of the Business History Conference As a result of the recent amendments to the Business History Conference Bylaws, the BHC has decided to split the roles of Secretary and Treasurer. The Secretary, like the Secretary-Treasurer before this year’s bylaw amendments, and the Treasurer going forward, will be elected by the members after endorsement by the Trustees. The Secretary is eligible for re-election to additional four-year terms of service.  The BHC now requests applications for this important position in our scholarly society.  As the job description below indicates, the BHC Secretary performs several crucial roles.  The candidate must be a facilitator of effective committee work, a repository of institutional memory, a partner to BHC presidents in achieving their priorities, a conductor of BHC elections, a resource about the requirements of the BHC bylaws, and a key participant in discussions about the BHC’s strategic direction. Timing, ...

EBHA E-Congress, September 11th, 2020 Hosted by CUNEF - Madrid (Zoom platform) Globalization Challenged [program below] We are pleased to announce the EBHA E-conference Globalization Challenged, to be held virtually on September 11th, 2020. We count with the participation, as the keynote speaker, of Martin Wolf (Financial Times). The conference also includes the panel “Globalization Challenged: the perspective of Business History” and a roundtable on teaching Business History in distance learning. To attend and receive the corresponding zoom invitation, please register for free at the following link:  https://ebha.org/public/C3 We truly believe this e-conference would be a fantastic opportunity to keep in touch, at least virtually. We are pretty much looking forward to meeting you. Best wishes, Andrea Colli, President Adoración Álvaro-Moya, Secretary Keynote Speech 9.15 - 10.15 am (CEST) Introduction and Chair: Andrea Colli, EBHA President Keynote speech: Martin Wolf, Financial Tim...

LASA 2021 [Hybrid conference] in Vancouver, Canada, and Virtual, May 26-29 Crisis global, desigualdades y centralidad de la vida Deadline for proposals and travel grants: September 7th, 2020 Call for papers information

  Call for papers Workshop "A Global History of State Enterprises in Developing Countries, 1950 to present" Deadline: September 18th Workshop: November 26/27th The international dimension of development planning has been the focus of a large body of scholarship over the past decade. Similarly, the influence of economic internationalism on national economies, in particular those of developing countries in the postcolonial period, has been widely discussed. While plenty is known about the planning processes concerning the involvement of international donor organisations and the entangled history of development aid and foreign politics, our knowledge of domestic economies of developing countries is often fragmented. In recent years, several historical and anthropological research works have demonstrated the relevance of business records, especially those of multinationally or internationally operating corporations from the Global North, for understanding postcolonial national ec...

Prize for an Emerging Food Historian The editors of Global Food History are pleased to announce the journal’s inaugural Prize for an Emerging Food Historian. Award winners will receive $100, the opportunity to have their contribution peer-reviewed and—pending successful reviews and revisions—published in the journal with an acknowledgment of the prize win. Articles should be 8,000 to 10,000 words (including notes), and should be based on primary source research. Articles should deal with at least one of the following historical concepts: time (change or continuity), causation and causality, context (historical and historiographical), or complexity. A full description of the journal’s aims and scope is available here. This prize will be awarded to an early career scholar or an established historian who has not yet published in the field of food history. Early career applicants must be no longer than three years past receipt of a PhD by the stated submission deadline, but need not have...

Anne C. Fleming, 1979-2020 The historical profession in the United States is mourning the tragic passing of Anne Fleming, Professor at the Georgetown Law Center.  Anne died far too young at the age of 40, just a decade or so into what was shaping up to be an extraordinarily productive career of scholarship, teaching, and intellectual leadership.  The Legal History Blog has already posted a compelling overview of her life and career, with a focus on her contributions to legal history. This remembrance offers a complementary reflection on the significance of Anne’s historical research and writing within the fields of business history and the history of political economy. Any assessment of Fleming as a scholar should begin with appreciation for the path that led her to embrace the historian’s craft. That route ran through not just the training that she received at Harvard Law School, but extensive experience with the legal situations confronted by Americans in less well-off econo...