The Exchange

The following journals have recently published new issues: Volume 59, Issue 2 (July 2019) of the Australian Economic History Review is available online. The last published volume of The Journal of Labor and Society is a Special Issue on Feminism and Labor Struggles (Volume 22, Issue 2, June 2019) The Economic History Review and Enterprise & Society just published their August 2019 and September 2019 issues, respectively. The AEA Papers and Proceedings (Volume 109, May 2019) may be accessed  here . Volume 61, Issue 6 of Business History is available here. Other interesting readings from across the web, For the Washington Post's section  Made by History , JoAnne Yates and Craig N. Murphy wrote " Globalism is under siege. Here's how to save it -- and why. " Their book  Engineering Rules  was also featured in the blog  The Past Speaks . And  Buying Gay: How Physique Entrepreneurs Sparked a Movement, by David K. Johnson From ...

Dear subscribers and readers of The Exchange,  This issue of "Over the Counter No. 47" contains news and information of interest to business historians from across the web: new journal issues, podcasts, and blog posts. Journal issues published since February of 2019: The Australian Economic History Review  59(1). Enterprise &Society 20(2) Business History 61(2) The Economic History Review 72(2) Noam Maggor's  "Bringing (The History of) Capitalism Back In"  in the journal Reviews in American History , should also be of interest. In newspapers and other serials: Contextualizing current debates in American politics, Louis Hyman wrote "The New Deal Wasn’t What You Think," for The Atlantic's series Ideas , on March 6th, 2019; and Chris Deutsch wrote "The only real solution to the border crisis" for The Washington Post's section Made by History last March 11th. Rebecca Spang, for History News Network , wrote ...

A number of business historians have written or been quoted in blog posts recently. A sampling: For the Economic History Society blog, "The Long Run," Aaron Graham writes "Wages of Sin: Slavery and the Banks, 1830-50," drawing on data from the "Legacies of British Slave Ownership Project." For SHOT's "Technology's Stories" blog, Daniel Levinson Wilk writes about " A Brief Episode in the History of Dusting." For the Society of U.S. Intellectual History blog, Andy Seal begins a series "Asking New Questions of the New History of Capitalism." Subsequent posts so far are "When Did the History of Capitalism Become New? Periodizing the Field" and "Two Paths for the History of Capitalism: Commodification and Proletarianization." On "Black Perspectives," the blog of the African American Intellectual History Society, Paige Glotzer writes about "The Connections between Urban Developm...

The Trustees of the Business History Conference are happy to announce that Dr. Paula de la Cruz Fernández has been selected from a field of candidates to become the new editor of "The Exchange."      Dr. de la Cruz-Fernández received her BA in History and MA in Anthropology from the Universidad de Granada (Spain) and received her doctorate in History at Florida International University in Miami, Florida (United States). She is a historian and researcher of gender, culture, and multinationals, and she has published in Enterprise and Society and Business History Review . Her Enterprise and Society article on the Singer Sewing Machine Company was awarded the 2015 Mira Wilkins Prize for the best article published annually in the journal pertaining to international and comparative business history. She currently works as a digital archivist at the George A. Smathers Libraries at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida. Dr. de la Cruz-Fernández is also a digital...

The Legal History Blog has announced that the site's guest blogger in August will be Laura Phillips Sawyer , assistant professor at the Harvard Business School, where she was previously a Newcomen Fellow. Sawyer is also a member of the BHC's Board of Trustees.       Her research focuses on U.S. political economy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, particularly on competition law and policy and its administration. She is the author of the recently released American Fair Trade: Proprietary Capitalism, Corporatism, and the "New Competition," 1880-1940 (Cambridge University Press). Her first post of the month concerns "Blending Business History and Legal History."

A few recent articles of interest to business and economic historians published in blogs: On the American Philosophical Society blog, Cynthia Heider writes about "Indenture Mining: Making Pre-Industrial Tradeswomen Visible" (part 1, with part 2 to come shortly) A recent post on the Library of Congress's "Inside Adams" blog discusses the history of quantitative graphics in "Historical Business & Economics Charts and Graphs." On the National Archives blog "The Text Message," Elise Fariello writes at length about the usefulness of "Tax Assessment Lists of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries." On the "Organizational History Network," Peter Miskell recaps his ABH talk on "The Content & Practice of Business History" An early July installment of JSTOR Daily delves into  "The Massive Fight over Sunday Mail," using a 1990 Richard R. John article as its source. On SHEAR's "Panor...

A number of history organizations and groups now publish active and informative blogs, which often include material of interest to business and economic historians. A (far from comprehensive) sampling: American Antiquarian Society: Past Is Present American Historical Association: AHA Today Centre for Imperial and Global History, Exeter: Imperial & Global Forum    Economic History Society: The Long Run Global Urban History Hagley Library and Museum: Research and Collection News Legal History Blog   National Museum of American History, O Say Can You See? (filtered for business history) New-York Historical Society: From the Stacks   Organization of American Historians: Process Organizational History Network Society for Historians of the Early Republic (SHEAR): The Panorama The Junto (early Americanists) Urban History Association: The Metropole  In addition, several individual historians manage blogs of interest: Ed Ayers, et al., Bunk:...

Lots of business history material out there recently; a sampling: JoAnne Yates and her work on business communications featured prominently in a Washington Post article related to the Comey memoranda stories. That piece was followed by a supportive pair of tweets from Paul Krugman, here and here , where he notes, "Her work on the history of business communication is, by the way, fascinating and revelatory." The NEP-HIS blog has a review by Adrian E. Tschoegl of Catherine Schenk's recent BHR article, "Rogue Trading at Lloyds Bank International, 1974: Operational Risk in Volatile Markets." [Limited time free access to the BHR article here .] Geoff Jones has written an essay for the Oxford University Press blog on "Can green entrepreneurs save our planet?" based on his forthcoming book, Profits and Sustainability: A History of Green Entrepreneurship . The "JSTOR Daily" used an Enterprise & Society article by Daniel Robinson, ...

The early Americanist blog "The Junto"  has been running a roundtable on colonial couture, "fashion as history in early American life." Some of the posts have a more direct business connection than others, but all provide interesting insights. The introductory post also includes a bibliography and list of relevant websites, as do many of the essays. The list of posts: Sara Georgini , "Roundtable: Colonial Couture" Charmaine A. Nelson , "Cash’s Bundle: Fugitive Slave Advertisements, Clothing, and Self-Care" Ben Marsh , "Making American Pompoms Great Again" William Howard Carter , "New York's Original Fashion Industry" Joanna M. Gohmann , "Ambassador in a Hat: The Sartorial Power of Benjamin Franklin’s Fur Cap" Kimberly Alexander , "Fashioning the 17th Century in Boston: John and Hannah Leverett" Laura E, Johnson , "Of Records and Rituals: Native Americans and the Textile Trade" Zara ...

Long-time BHC member (past-president, 2012-13) and former editor of Enterprise & Society Ken Lipartito has launched a blog called "In the Age of Trump," styled as "an occasional blog on economics, politics, and culture" and "a first draft of history in the age of Trump." The point of view may be inferred from the site's logo, which is an image of the sinking Titanic . Lipartito, who teaches history at Florida International University in Miami ("the future Atlantis"), promises to continue writing the blog "as long as I can keep treading water."     The initial post, "An Economic History of Trumpism," provides a link to an extended essay posted on SSRN. A second essay (in two parts), is titled "Capitalism and Slavery Redux" and comments on recent publications and discussion on that topic.

The Early American History blog The Junto has posted a multi-part examination of the recent book edited by Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman, Slavery's Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development (2016).  The book's table of contents, which includes essays by--among many others--Edward Baptist, Caitlin Rosenthal, Joshua Rothman, Kathryn Boodry,  and John Majewski, is available here . The volume is the product of a 2011 conference organized jointly by Harvard and Brown universities. The forum essays are: Tom Cutterham, "Forum Introduction" Casey Schmitt, "The Global and the Hemispheric" Justin Leroy, "Commodities and Agents in the History of Slavery" Christy Clark-Pujara, "Slave Economies of the U.S. North"   Kevin Waite, "Slavery's Civil War?"

The Economic History Society has launched a new blog, called "The Long Run." According to the editors, The aim of the blog is to encourage discussion of economic and social history – broadly defined. The blog is part of the Society’s evolving strategy to, one the one hand, strengthen ties among its members and, on the other hand, broaden the public appeal of economic and social history while increasing the impact of its members’ research by making it relevant to contemporary policy debates. The blog will also publicize abstracts of articles in the Economic History Review ; the editors will select one article from those advertised as forthcoming from each issue that has appeal to a wider audience and approach a specialist to review this article. This review will also appear on the NEP-HIS blog – publication of which will be timed to coincide with publication of the article in the Review . For information about posting to the blog, please see here ; submissions can be ...

Building on earlier efforts to stimulate business history in Canada, a small group of historians, former archivists, and business people began working last summer to create a new business history organization, the Canadian Business History Association – l’association Canadiennes pour l’histories des affaires (CBHA/ACHA) . The organization is now open for membership.     The group shares the conviction that the business heritage is an integral part of Canadian history and that this heritage cannot be preserved without a strong academic/ business partnership. The CBHA/ACHA mission is to establish a not-for-profit association that provides a forum for archivists, historians, managers, and management scholars to further the historical study of Canadian business and how that history relates to other countries. According to the group's website, The CBHA/ACHA is dedicated to the pursuit of Canadian business history and its role both domestically and in world business his...

A new blog has been established on the topic of Chinese economic history. According to the home page, ChineseEconomicHistory.com seeks to provide a bridge between these two isolated academic worlds – that of Chinese economic historians in the Far East, and economists in the West. Everything is conducted in English, and all periods of Chinese history are included. We cover topics of interest, provide commentary and discussion on research, and conduct interviews with prominent Chinese economic historians.  The site is brand new, but it already contains a useful set of video interviews with economic historians from the World Economic History Congress in Kyoto.     The site's organizer is Ronald A. Edwards of Tamkang University. Hat tip to Andrew Smith at The Past Speaks .

Stephanie Decker, Christina Lubinski, and  an Wadhwani have launched a new blog and website, the Organizational History Network . The goal of the project is to bring together people interested in the various organizational history initiatives at the moment, such as the ESRC seminar series (Stephanie Decker with Mick Rowlinson and John Hassard), the CBS Business History Initiative (Mads Mordhorst, Christina Lubinski, and Dan Wadhwani), and the EGOS (European Group for Organizational Studies) stream in MOH (Management and Organization History) (Dan Wadhwani, Stephanie Decker, and Matthias Kipping) and also to serve as a platform for calls for papers and events. As the editors explain, This page is run by a network of scholars interested in historical approaches to studying organizations. In recent years a number of scholars from around world have hosted seminars, events at conferences, published articles and books and run research projects and networks in this field. This we...

"Imagining Markets" is a combined website to report information relevant to two projects hosted by the University of Exeter’s History Department: "Imagining Markets: Conceptions of Europe, Empire/Commonwealth and China in Britain’s Economic Future since 1900" (AHRC network, 2014-16), established by David Thackeray, Andrew Thompson, and Richard Toye, and David Thackeray’s AHRC Research Leadership Fellowship: "Backing Britain: Imagining a Nation’s Economic Future since 1900" (2014-15). As the initial post explains, "Both projects are united by an interest in connecting historical and contemporary ways of thinking about Britain’s future global economic orientation, and involve a range of activities staged with project partners from the fields of public policy and heritage organisations." The website includes a blog, notices of events, and descriptions of the primary and related projects.

A recent NPR "Morning Edition" feature focused on "The Forgotten Female Programmers Who Created Modern Tech" (audio and text). The program mentions particularly Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper, as well as the resources of the Computer History Museum . The New York Times published two more essays on Edward Baptist's "The Half Has Never Been Told": "Harvesting Cotton-Field Capitalism: Edward Baptist’s New Book Follows the Money on Slavery" and a review by Eric Foner. Still on Baptist, there is an analytical post by Patrick Rael on the African American Intellectual History Society blog: "Capitalism's Slavery" ; and Tom Cuttenham over at The Junto continues the discussion with "Commodifying Labour, Commodifying People." Sad to report the death of well-known French business historian Maurice Lévy-Leboyer, on September 27; Hubert Bonin has published a homage . Some time ago, we reported on the efforts of busines...

This week's collection of notes of interest from around the Web: Web resource for Depression studies: "American Life Histories : Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940" at the Library of Congress; the site contains "the life stories of more than 10,000 men and women from a variety of regions, occupations and ethnic groups. People who told stories of life and work during the 1930s include an Irish maid from Massachusetts, a woman who worked in a North Carolina textile mill, a Scandinavian iron worker, a Vermont farm wife, an African-American worker in Chicago meat packing house, and a clerk in Macy's department store." "Tracing Capitalism around the Globe" is a Cambridge University Press blog interview with Larry Neal and Jeffrey Williamson, coeditors of CUP's Cambridge History of Capitalism . More on Thomas Piketty:    a weekly series of substantive posts by Adam David Morton    "Piketty Envy" from Th...

Items of interest from around the Web: From the Museum of the City of New York : a new exhibition featuring the work of advertising illustrator Mac Connor (physical exhibit, but many on-line examples) From the New-York Historical Society blog: a post on "When Edison Lit Up Manhattan" As part of the British Library's "Endangered Archives" project, a large group of digitized documents from nineteenth-century Sierra Leone have been posted; many of the items concern "liberated Africans"--Africans freed from slave ships by the British Royal Navy The program is available for "All at Sea: An International Conference on Prize Papers" to be held in early October at the UK National Archives; more information about the prize papers (intercepted mail and legal documents found on captured ships and now part of British High Court of Admiralty records) can be found here .   The Atlantic has an interview with Kara Swanson about her new book,...

A rather eclectic listing of recent material of interest to business and economic historians: Jill Lepore published a critique of Clayton Christensen and "Disruptive Innovation" in The New Yorker ; this generated a good deal of commentary, most notably a response from Christensen . BackStory with the American History Guys aired a program on the history of corporations in America (shortly before the Hobby Lobby decision). Lou Galambos 's keynote address at the 2013 EBHS Conference, "Is This a Decisive Moment for the History of Business, Economic History, and the History of Capitalism?" is now available online. Yet more about Thomas Piketty and Capitalism in the 21st Century :       "Picketty Mania," from The Guardian (June 17, 2014)       An extended review by Cory Doctorow in Boing Boing Two series of posts of interest from the Legal History Blog:        Dan Ernst has written a several-part dis...