The Exchange

Sven Beckert , Laird Bell Professor of History at Harvard University, has been awarded a 2015 Bancroft Prize in history for his book Empire of Cotton: A Global History by the trustees of Columbia University. He is a co-recipient with Greg Grandin, a professor at New York University, who won for The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World . The official announcement called Empire of Cotton “a masterful achievement in the burgeoning field of the study of capitalism . . . an expansive global history that also helps us rethink the history of the United States, lifting our understanding of American slavery, cotton production, the Civil War, and Reconstruction out of the parochial confines of nation-centered history. Deeply researched across four continents and cogently argued, it is a book that will have lasting value for students of the United States and the 19th-century world.”     The Bancroft Prize is awarded annually by the trustees of Col...

Edward Balleisen of Duke University will be taking over the directorship of the BHC's Doctoral Colloquium beginning with the 2016 meeting. Instituted in 2005 with JoAnne Yates as director, the Colloquium has been led for many years by Pamela W. Laird of the University of Colorado Denver.  Joanne Bailey reviews Andrew Popp's Entrepreneurial Families (Pickering & Chatto, 2012) on her blog, "Joanne Bailey Muses on History"; readers should also check the comments section for further discussion. Since its inauguration a few months ago, Who Makes Cents: A History of Capitalism Podcast , has posted nine interviews; next up is Kimberly Phillips-Fein on April 1. Long-time BHC member Ross Thomson died on February 12, 2015. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Yale University in 1976 and was for many years professor of economics at the University of Vermont. An obituary has been posted by the university. William Dalrymple has written an extended essay on th...

The Social History Society will hold its conference next week, March 31-April 2, at the University of Portsmouth. The meeting is the largest gathering of social and cultural historians in the UK.     Conference topics are divided into "strands." All include papers of interest, though the two most relevant here are "Economies, Culture, & Consumption" and "Political Cultures, Policy & Citizenship." The full program can be found on the conference website as a pdf. The plenary lecture will be given by Jonathan Hyslop on the topic "Navigating Empire: Ports, Ships, and Global History."     For those who wish to follow the conference on social media, the Twitter hashtag is #portsocialhist.

Readers will be interested in a review essay by Richard R. John, to be published in the Business History Review and currently available online as a free access article at the CUP website. Entitled "Prophet of Perspective: Thomas K. McCraw," the essay uses McCraw's last book, The Founders and Finance: How Hamilton, Gallatin, and Other Immigrants Forged a New Economy (2012), as a focus for understanding his scholarship overall. As John explains, This essay provides a brief survey of McCraw’s ideas about economic policy and capitalism. Other reviewers might have chosen different themes; possibilities include the relationship between the United States and the world, the advantages and disadvantages of biography as a literary form, and even the contrasting aesthetics of history and social science. Even so, I believe that the two I have chosen provide a revealing perspective on McCraw’s most abiding concerns. This essay has three parts. The first part provides a brief o...

The 2015 joint meeting of the Business History Conference and the European Business History Association will be held in Miami, Florida, on June 24-27. The theme of the meeting will be “Inequalities: Winners and Losers in Business.”  Thomas Piketty , author of Capital in the 21st Century , will deliver the joint meeting's plenary address.      The preliminary program has now been posted on the meeting website. In addition to pre-meeting workshops, plenaries, receptions, and organized local activities in Miami, the conference will feature 88 regular sessions on topics broadly spanning the field of business history.             This will be the fourth joint meeting of the Business History Conference and the European Business History Association.

The Association of Academic Historians in Australian and New Zealand Business Schools (AAHANZBS) will hold its seventh Annual Conference on November 2-3, 2015 in Auckland, New Zealand. The Business and Labour History Group (B&LHG) of the Work Research Institute, Auckland University of Technology (AUT) University Business School will host the meeting, which will have the theme "Global Business Practices in Historical Perspective" Submissions are invited for papers addressing the conference theme, including papers relating to accounting history, business history, economic history, labor history, management history, marketing history, tourism history, transport history and other areas of interest relating to historical research in business schools. Papers / panel suggestions around teaching and pedagogy relating to business and labor history are also welcome, as are papers from researchers outside business schools who have an interest in these fields of study. Both abs...

The National Museum of American History (NMAH) at the Smithsonian Institution has announced a search for a curator of business history. This is a new full-time permanent position, classified GS-13 ($90,823.00 to $118,069.00). The museum is looking for a business historian with curatorial experience (with a history of technology, public history, and social history perspective more than an economic history cliometrician). Ideally the candidate will have an interest in expanding collections and preparing exhibitions as well as a record of academic publications and speaking. The emphasis will be on U.S. history post-World War II. One major responsibility will be continuing to build on the opportunities offered by the upcoming American Enterprise exhibition. The expectation is that the individual will work with active companies, so the ability to undertake oral history projects and archival collecting as well as artifact collecting will be important.     The full job descriptio...