Business History articles from April 1997

Business History archives from April 1997

Country House Brewing in England: 1500-1900.
April 1, 1997... Pamela Sambrook is well qualified, both academically and practically, for the task she undertakes. Previously, she has written a doctoral thesis on the finances of the earls of Lichfield in the nineteenth century, and, as one of the first farm...

The British Toy Business: A History Since 1700.
April 1, 1997... Kenneth Brown's informative history of the toy industry illuminates with skill, and a sense of fun, a sector of the British economy neglected by business historians. This neglect is partly explained by the nature of the activity itself, since...

The Lancashire Cotton Industry: A History Since 1700.
April 1, 1997... The dramatic rise and attenuated decay of Lancashire's cotton industry generated not only textiles in unimaginable quantities and varieties but also shelfloads of books ranging from early parliamentary inquiries to outstanding examples of...

Markets, Market Culture and Popular Protest in Eighteenth-Century Britain and Ireland.
April 1, 1997... The subject matter and many of the ideas present in this collection of essays have their origin in E.P. Thompson's seminal article on 'The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century'. Published over a quarter of a century ago in...

The First Industrial Society: 1750-1850 Lancashire.
April 1, 1997... Chris Aspin is a well-known Lancashire journalist who has made a hobby of local history for over 30 years and produced a sequence of popular books. This work was first published by Helmshore Local History Society in 1969 and is now reproduced in...

An Atlas of Industrial Protest in Britain: 1750-1990.
April 1, 1997... This book, the work of five main authors and four other contributors, has its origins in Charlesworth and Southall's contribution on labour protest and unionisation in J. Langton and J. Morris (eds.), Atlas of Industrializing Britain, 1780-1914...

A History of British Industrial Relations, 1939-1979: Industrial Relations in a Declining Economy.
April 1, 1997... This collection of essays is effectively the third volume in a series that covers the period back to 1875, and it aims at an authoritative assessment of industrial relations from 1939 to the advent of Margaret Thatcher's government. Like its...

Government Versus the Market: The Growth of the Public Sector, Economic Management and British Economic Performance, c. 1890-1979.
April 1, 1997... This book seeks to place British economic policy and performance in its theoretical and comparative context. It attempts to explain how and why the boundaries between the agenda and non-agenda of government have changed over time and why a...

British Business and Protection: 1903-1932.
April 1, 1997... In this long-awaited study, Andrew Marrison provides a comprehensive account of the search by British businessmen for a protective tariff from the rise of Joseph Chamberlain's Tariff Reform movement in 1903 to the eventual introduction of a...

Japan and the City of London.
April 1, 1997... The close relationship between the City of London and Japan is well known today. Numerous Japanese banks, brokerage firms and finance houses are present in the City of London, from where they conduct extensive European or even international...

Transforming Rover: Renewal Against the Odds.
April 1, 1997... The fortunes of Rover during the 1980s and the early 1990s are examined by Pilkington within the framework of recent management literature. First, the organisation of transformation of the company is explored with the focus on the need for the...

The Making of Modern Bristol.
April 1, 1997... This collection of nine essays on the economic, social, religious and urban history of Bristol since the seventeenth century is introduced not as a comprehensive study of the subject but rather a presentation of new forms of synthesis and...

Enterprise and Management: Essays in Honour of Peter L. Payne.
April 1, 1997... Appointed to the post of Colquhoun Lecturer in Business History at the University of Glasgow in 1959, Peter Payne has since enjoyed a distinguished academic career, notably as a student of entrepreneurship, and with a record of publications in...

History of Pedlars in Europe.
April 1, 1997... This is a pioneering work about peddling in Europe, 1400-1900. The peddlars in general have had a bad reputation reflecting the resentment of the sedentary population against nomads and foreigners, gypsies, Jews and peddlars. This is a thoroughly...

The Politics of Women's Work: The Parisian Garment Trades, 1750-1915.
April 1, 1997... Women's work and the associated 'problem' that formed part of nineteenth-century European culture is exemplified within the garment trades. Thus Coffin's analysis of gender at work in the Parisian garment trades from the constraints of...

Ide och pengar. Sparbankerna i det Finlandska samhallet, 1822-1994.
April 1, 1997... Antti Kuustera's book considers the establishment and development of the Finnish savings banks from the beginning in 1822 to the present day. The book is based on both secondary and primary sources, as well as interviews, and is well documented....

PME et croissance economique, l'experience francaise des annees 1920.
April 1, 1997... A revised and shortened version of Professor Michael Lescure's doctoral dissertation, this volume examines the performance, structure and strategy of French small and medium-size enterprises (petites et moyennes entreprises, or SME) from the...

La Banque imperiale ottomane.
April 1, 1997... The studies of J. Thobie, which are authoritative on Ottoman financial policy and on French loans and investments in this part of the world, failed to deal thoroughly with the history of the Banque imperiale ottomane (BIO), because the bank...

Die Entwicklung der Motorisierung im Deutschen Reich und den Nachfolgestaaten.
April 1, 1997... Compared with other sectors, such as railway construction, heavy industry and chemicals, economic historians have paid relatively little attention to the German automobile industry or the wider impact of the motor car in Europe and this has left...

The Art of Cloaking Ownership: The Secret Collaboration and Protection of the German War Industry by the Neutrals.
April 1, 1997... Neutrality in wartime in Europe is the underlying theme of a book by two Dutch scholars. By studying the role of financial institutions in a neutral country - Sweden they highlight the dilemma of carrying on business as usual in the extraordinary...

Dictionnaire des patrons en Belgique. Les hommes, les entreprises, les resaux.
April 1, 1997... Literature on entrepreneurs is scarce, and when available is often either hagiographic or condemnatory and therefore rarely scientific. So we welcome this 'dictionary' of the entrepreneurs of the first continental country of Europe to...

The Forces of Labour: The Western European Labour Movement and the Working Class in the Twentieth Century.
April 1, 1997... Stefan Berger and David Broughton have edited a valuable collection of essays on the history of the western European labour movement. The standard of all the essays is high, and some - such as those by Tobias Abse and Stefan Berger - are...

Les groupes financiers francais.
April 1, 1997... This useful addition to the 'Que sais-je?' encyclopaedic handbook series surveys the development of French financial groups since the early nineteenth century. Most of the book concentrates on the post-World War II period, and particular...

Management, Labour and Industrial Politics in Modern Europe: The Quest for Productivity Growth During the Twentieth Century.
April 1, 1997... The edited proceedings of a conference, this book is itself an example of the quest for productivity growth within the British service sector in the 1990s. Like most conference proceedings it suffers from the absence of a coherent argument or...

Quest for Economic Empire: European Strategies of German Big Business in the Twentieth Century.
April 1, 1997... This is a stimulating book for business historians. Business history, especially as it is written in the English language, is still largely focused on American and British issues and the free market economy. This volume on European strategies of...

Economic Growth in Europe Since 1945.
April 1, 1997... There is now a large and rapidly growing literature on post-World War II economic growth - particularly on Europe. The origins of the volume under review lie in the general revival of interest in growth and growth theory, but specifically in a...

Concord and Conflict: The United States and Russia, 1867-1914.
April 1, 1997... This is the second volume of Norman Saul's proposed trilogy on Russian - American relations; volume one (Distant Friends, 1991) took the story from 1763 to 1897. In keeping with its predecessor, this encyclopaedic book charts a narrative course,...

The Collapse of the American Management Mystique.
April 1, 1997... The crucial backdrop to this analysis is the slow realisation during the 1980s that American industry was under intense pressure from more competitive industries, especially in West Germany and Japan and reminiscent of the debates about Britain's...

The Fall of the Packard Motor Company.
April 1, 1997... Though much ink has already been spilled on the history of the Packard Motor Car Company, this book must rank among the best. Based on a myriad of sources, the uniqueness of this offering is that it concentrates on why the company failed, being...

Power, Culture and Conflict in the Coalfields: West Virginia and South Wales, 1900-22.
April 1, 1997... This book compares one American and one British coalfield in order to examine the different patterns of industrial and political protest and the way in which these were shaped by contrasting social relationships and cultural formations. Rejecting...

Broken Promises: An Unconventional View of What Went Wrong at IBM.
April 1, 1997... This is another book analysing IBM's fall from grace in 1990, from stock market bellwether to greatest corporate loss-maker in history. Books about IBM appear with some frequency, and their quality varies greatly. Broken Promises is well above...

West Indian Workers and the United Fruit Company in Costa Rica: 1870-1940.
April 1, 1997... This is a meticulous study, rich in descriptive detail, composed of four loosely integrated essays. The first charts the early history of the UFCO on the Atlantic (Caribbean) coast of Costa Rica from the turn of the century to 1929 when,...

Innovation in East Asia: The Challenge to Japan.
April 1, 1997... The outstanding economic performance of Japan and the East Asian newly industrialising countries (NICs) over the last three to four decades has generated a substantial, and still growing, body of academic and lay publications. The analytical...

Business Enterprise in Japan: Views of Leading Japanese Economists.
April 1, 1997... This book is the translation of a book which was originally published in Japanese in 1989, when Japan was at the peak of the so-called 'bubble economy'. When the Japanese edition was published, I thought that it adroitly encapsulated the essence...

The Origins of Japanese Trade Supremacy.
April 1, 1997... Professor Howe has written a vigorous and stimulating study of Japan's foreign trade prior to the Second World War. The approach is broadly historical, starting in early Tokugawa (and even pre-Tokugawa) times, progressing to the opening of Japan...

World Investment Report, 1995: Transnational Corporations and Competitiveness.
April 1, 1997... Annual reports published by international institutions such as the World Bank and the UNCTAD have undergone a transformation. No more are they dull compendiums of data and source material which are consulted by a narrow band of readers such as...

The Workers of Nations: Industrial Relations in a Global Economy.
April 1, 1997... This valuable compendium is intended to illuminate how the globalisation of economic activity is affecting labour in the advanced industrial societies of Asia, Europe and North America. It compares and contrasts the experiences of different...

Using Computers in History: A Practical Guide.
April 1, 1997... Whenever members of the historical computing fraternity forgather the refrain is often heard that what is holding back their project, and in particular the teaching of IT and quantitative methods to students, is the high start-up costs of new...

International Business History: A Contextual and Case Study Approach.
April 1, 1997... This book is a development from an undergraduate course in international business history, taught by the author during the 1980s. It is based on a series of case studies, organised into sections on Europe, North America, Central and South...

Historical Studies in Industrial Relations.
April 1, 1997... The editors of this new journal have set themselves the ambitious task of reviving the apparently fading connections between the disciplines of industrial relations and history. The lack of historical awareness in much recent industrial relations...

The History of Accounting: An International Encyclopaedia.
April 1, 1997... This encyclopaedia has the commendable aim of providing historical background for accountants grappling with contemporary problems in accounting, whether they are researchers in public practice or large corporations, or academics or students. It...

Consumer Culture.
April 1, 1997... Written as an introductory text, Consumer Culture is aimed particularly at students of sociology and media and cultural studies. It offers a synthesis of the major debates currently surrounding the nature and role of consumer culture in modern...

The Nature of Industrialization, vol. 3, Enterprise and Labour: From the Eighteenth Century to the Present.
April 1, 1997... The papers in this collection, now revised and expanded, were first delivered to a University of Warwick summer school in 1987 (sic). They were intended to present overviews and summaries of current knowledge, rather than efforts to strike out...

The Dynamics of Technical Innovation: The Evolution and Development of Information Technology.
April 1, 1997... In this book Gert Duysters explores the evolution of complex industrial systems over time in which technological changes, market and industry structures and firm (especially innovation) strategies constitute a dynamic interactive framework. As...