The Exchange

Segundo Taller Empresariado en América Latina en Perspectiva Histórica y Global En víspera de la reunión anual 2022 de la Business History Conference   Historia empresarial en tiempos de incertidumbre: acogiendo la complejidad y la diversidad https://thebhc.org/2022-bhc-meeting   7 de abril de 2022 Hotel María Isabel Sheraton, México Instituciones co-organizadoras Business History Conference y la Asociación Mexicana de Historia Económica, A. C. Llamado a presentación de resúmenes El día previo al inicio de la Business History Conference (BHC) 2022 se llevará a cabo el Segundo Taller Empresariado en América Latina en Perspectiva Histórica y Global. Esta es una invitación para aquellxs investigadorxs que prefieran presentar resultados de investigación en idioma español o portugués y deseen aprovechar la reunión anual de la BHC para entablar conversaciones con investigadores internacionales especializados en las temáticas que trabajan. No hay temas predefin...

Dear BHC members, Prof. Dr. Corinna Norrick-Rühl and I would like to invite interested BHC members to join a working group on "the business of books" as a late follow-up to conversations at the 2019 meeting of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP).  You need not be a SHARP member to participate, so we hoped this would be of interest to some members of this organization as well.  Hosted primarily on Slack, we hope to assemble a collaborative community that cuts across periods, geographies, and topics but that shares a common interest in the literary marketplace and the economics of publishing, authorship, bookselling, and reading.  Anyone who is interested in thinking and learning about economic frameworks and the book trade can join. We anticipate 3-4 meetings/events per year, to include: Works-in-progress talks with a pre-circulated working paper Discussion groups, perhaps a "book club" format for book historical scholarly works ...

  OVER THE COUNTER NO.5 8 The Business History Conference April newsletter includes New issues in academic journals Links to recent Interviews and Podcasts A new  MEET THE OFFICERS  interview with Dr. Laura Phillips Sawyer #BHC2021online Award Ceremony Report Reach out to the editor  Paula A. de la Cruz-Fernández Help us amplify our audience by connecting with us and sharing this newsletter BHC LinkedIn Page H-Business BHC Twitter BHC blog  The Exchange

  Join us March 11-13, 2021 at the #BHC2021online conference The program includes live sessions, an online showcase, roundtables, networking opportunities, a mentoring program, and award ceremonies.  Check out the full program here: https://thebhc.org/meeting-program/19730 Register here:  https://hopin.com/events/bhc-2021-annual-meeting

OVER THE COUNTER NO.57 The Business History Conference February newsletter includes: New issues in academic journals Interviews, Podcasts, Virtual Events, and Research from across the Web A new  MEET THE OFFICERS  interview with Professor Peter Coclanis. Reach out to the editor  Paula A. de la Cruz-Fernández Help us amplify our audience by connecting with us and sharing this newsletter BHC LinkedIn Page H-Business BHC Twitter BHC blog  The Exchange

  OVER THE COUNTER NO.56 The Business History Conference January newsletter includes: New issues in academic journals Interviews, Podcasts, and Virtual EventsResearch from across the Web New!  MEET THE OFFICERS A series of interviews with the officers of the Business History Conference Download the newsletter here Reach out to the editor  Paula A. de la Cruz-Fernández Help us amplify our audience by connecting with us and sharing this newsletter BHC LinkedIn Page BHC Twitter BHC blog The Exchange

[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...

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...

Dear Subscribers to The Exchange , Professor Edward J. Balleisen's video of his Presidential Address is now available through the Business History Conference's website , or on the BHC's new YouTube Channel . The text for the presentation "The Prospects for Collaborative Research in Business History" will be available later this year on the BHC website and also published on Enterprise & Society . [reply to [ web-editor@thebhc.org ] if you wish to reply to the Editor of The Exchange ]

March 25, 2020 Dear Friends of the BHC, I am writing to all those who registered and planned to participate in the 2020 BHC annual meeting in Charlotte, as well as to BHC members. Apologies if you receive multiple copies of this email as those lists overlap. As we all know, the meeting did not go as planned. Many people were unable to travel due to a myriad of travel restrictions imposed by governments and employers, and some who came had to turn around and go back home earlier than anticipated. Based on my count of the pre-registration packets, about 100 people came out of 280 who had registered in advance. Since some had to leave early, and others arrived while the meeting was underway, we probably had no more than 50 present at any one time. Yet, despite everything, we had a credible meeting. On very short notice, the hotel’s audio-visual supplier (PSAV) installed technology in nine rooms that allowed us to use Zoom to facilitate online presentations and participati...

The #BHCCharlotte #BHC2020 call for proposals closes October 1st . To submit your panel or proposal visit: https://thebhc.org/call-papers-2020 The following call for panelists was posted in H-Business this weekend. My apologies for the crossposting: Searching for BHC Session Panelists: "Markets, Monetary and Financial Uses of Silver in North America (17-19th centuries)," 2020 BHC Annual Meeting (Charlotte, NC, March 2020) by Manuel Bautista Jane Knodell (University of Vermont) and Manuel A. Bautista Gonzalez (Columbia University) are interested in assembling a session on markets, the monetary and financial uses of silver, and the actors involved in its intermediation in North America (17th-19th centuries), for the 2020 annual meeting of the Business History Conference (Charlotte, NC, March 12-14, 2020). - Jane would like to present a paper about how the colony of Massachusetts handled silver money during and after the establishment of its mint (1650-1720), wi...

Check out the new look of the BHC website! Thank you to Shane Hamilton for upgrading the experience of looking for news in #bizhis, research projects, and expert profiles. Also, if you haven't done so, click here to check out all the dancing and conversations (photographs) that went on in Cartagena, Colombia (#BHCCartagena)

[re-posting on current's editor's account in case subscribers did not receive a notification via email last Friday] In the past few months, several business historians have appeared in the media: In January, Sean Adams (University of Florida) convened Richard John (Columbia University), Victoria Woeste (American Bar Association), and Matt Stoler (Open Markets Institute) to discuss the history and present of monopolies. The video of the roundtable that took place at the Bob Graham Center for Public Service of the University of Florida (Gainesville) was broadcasted as part of  C-SPAN's series on American History . Caitlin Rosenthal (UC Berkeley) wrote "The perils of Big Data: How crunching numbers can lead to moral blunders" for the series  Made by History of the Washington Post . In  this article , she discusses business ethics in relation to recent news about McKinsey & Co. being "guilty by proximity" in the case of Purdue Pharma benefiting f...

In the past few months, several business historians have appeared in the media: In January, Sean Adams (University of Florida) convened Richard John (Columbia University), Victoria Woeste (American Bar Association), and Matt Stoler (Open Markets Institute) to discuss the history and present of monopolies. The video of the roundtable that took place at the Bob Graham Center for Public Service of the University of Florida (Gainesville) was broadcasted as part of C-SPAN's series on American History . Caitlin Rosenthal (UC Berkeley) wrote "The perils of Big Data: How crunching numbers can lead to moral blunders" for the series Made by History of the Washington Post . In this article , she discusses business ethics in relation to recent news about McKinsey & Co. being "guilty by proximity" in the case of Purdue Pharma benefiting from opioid production and sale. Stephen Mihm contributed to Bloomberg's Opinion with a piece on the latest state of the unio...

'Boss: The Black Experience in Business' premieres Tuesday, April 23, 2019, on PBS. This production explores the History of African American Entrepreneurship in the United States. Dr. Shennette Garrett-Scott is featured in this documentary. "The history of business and entrepreneurship lies at the heart of the American story, but often absent from that narrative are the experiences of African Americans. From the country’s earliest days, African Americans have embodied the qualities of innovation, risk-taking and determination to forge a path toward a better life. The new two-hour documentary traces the lives of African American entrepreneurs over 150 years, from those bound by bondage to moguls at the top of million-dollar empires. Boss: The Black Experience in Business premieres nationwide Tuesday, April 23 at 8:00 p.m. ET on PBS (check local listings), pbs.org/boss and PBS apps. Directed by Peabody- and Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Stanley Nelson (Tell Them We Are ...

With some trepidation about whether enough information would be available to sustain the project, I published the first post on "The Exchange" on April 2, 2010. Nearly nine years and over 1,400 posts later, I am signing off as editor of the BHC's blog. I've enjoyed the experience very much and learned a lot along the way. I hope the results have been of service to BHC members and to business and economic historians generally. My thanks for the kind words and support many of you have communicated over the years!     Although I'm retiring from this activity, "The Exchange" will go on, in the capable hands of Paula de la Cruz Fernández. I plan to continue to enjoy reading it for many years to come.--Pat Denault

New and forthcoming books of interest for October through December 2018 and January-February 2019 (for bibliographic purposes, the list is divided between 2018 and 2019 titles): October-December 2018 Stuart Aveyard, Paul Corthorn, and Sean O'Connell, The Politics of Consumer Credit in the UK, 1938-1992 (Oxford University Press, November 2018). Matthias Blum and Christopher R. Colvin, eds.,  An Economist's Guide to Economic History  (Palgrave Macmillan, December 2018). Bradley J. Borougerdi, Commodifying Cannabis: A Cultural History of a Complex Plant in the Atlantic World (Lexington Books, November 2018). Youssef Cassis and Giuseppe Telesca, eds.,  Financial Elites in European Banking: Historical Perspectives  (Oxford University Press, October 2018). Huw David,  Trade, Politics, and Revolution: South Carolina and Britain's Atlantic Commerce, 1730-1790  (University of South Carolina Press, November 2018). Hannah Catherine Davies,  Tra...

The American Historical Association annual meeting , taking place in Chicago, Illinois, with a theme of "Loyalties," begins this week. As usual, the BHC is sponsoring events as an AHA affiliated society.  The organization will host a lunch on Saturday, January 5, 12:00–1:30 p.m. with a discussion of  "Loyalty/Disloyalty in Business," chaired by Pamela Walker Laird, University of Colorado Denver. The panel consists of Sven Kube, Florida International University; Debra Michals, Merrimack College; Travis Ross, Yale University; Kelly Sharp, Luther College; and Gregory J. Wood, Frostburg State University.      The BHC-sponsored session this year is 206: "Communist Corporate Cultures: Enterprise between Political Principle and Profit Pursuit," chaired by Philip Scranton.      There will of course be many other sessions of interest at the meeting, including: Session 5 : "Infrastructure and Power in the Pacific, 1840–1940" Session 8 : "Di...

Edwin J. Perkins, professor emeritus at the University of Southern California (USC), died unexpectedly on October 20, 2018, at the age of 79. Ed was a fixture at BHC meetings until recently, serving as BHC president in 1994-1995 and as editor of Business and Economic History Online , 2010-2012. He was also for many years associate editor of the Pacific Historical Review .     Perkins earned his B.A. from William & Mary in 1961, his MBA at the University of Virginia in 1963, and his Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University in 1972 under the guidance of Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., and Louis Galambos. He joined the faculty at USC in 1973, retiring in 1997.     His major publications include Financing Anglo-American Trade: The House of Brown, 1800-1880 (1975), The Economy of Colonial America (1980), American Public Finance and Financial Services, 1700-1815 (1997), and Wall Street to Main Street: Charles Merrill and Middle-Class Investors (1999).      A...

Recent forays of business historians into the public discourse: On the "Public Books" blog, Kim Phillips-Fein writes about philanthropy and inequality in "Philanthropists Will Not Save Us." In the wake of the U.S. decision to withdraw from the Universal Postal Union, Richard John was quoted in a Vox article; he is the author of a 2015 essay  in the Journal of Policy History , "Projecting Power Overseas: U.S. Postal Policy and International Standard-Setting at the 1863 Paris Postal Conference." For the Commission on Democracy and Technology, Heidi Tworek writes about "What the History of Radio Tells Us about Technology and Democracy." Ellen Hartigan-O’Connor and Lisa G. Materson wrote an essay for the History News Network on "What Historians Could Teach Senators on the Judiciary Committee"; they focus on historians' work in finding the harder to hear voices of women in the archives. For "On the Media," Per H...