Business History articles from April 1999

Business History archives from April 1999

British business history: a review of the periodical literature for 1997.
April 1, 1999... Reviews of periodicals literature provide a sense of peering 'back to the future', observing the outcomes of earlier research and writing combined with the impact of particular conferences and special issues of journals. From the 1997 crop...

Negotiating the rewards of invention: the shop-floor inventor in Victorian Britain.
April 1, 1999... We know very little about the production and management of innovation within the nineteenth-century firm. Edgerton has recently criticised the lack of attention paid to it by British business historians, who have scarcely noticed its existence,...

German direct investment in the UK, 1871-1918.
April 1, 1999... This article examines German direct investment in the UK from 1871 to 1918.(1) The period under review was chosen because it represents an era of fundamental change. Germany advanced from a still largely agriculturally dominated country to...

Diversification strategies of British trading companies: Harrisons & Crosfield, c.1900-c.1980.
April 1, 1999... This article examines the diversification strategies and organisational competencies of Harrisons & Crosfield, a British-based multinational, between 1900 and 1980. There is an accumulating body of case study evidence on the historical...

Compensating the workers: industrial injury and compensation in the British asbestos industry, 1930s-60s.
April 1, 1999... Occupational health and safety have hardly featured yet in most histories of British (or American) industrialisation. Business historians have preferred to concentrate on management rather than labour, reflecting the conservative nature of the...

English Counties and Public Building.(Review)
April 1, 1999... CHRISTOPHER CHALKLIN, 1650-1830 (London: The Hambledon Press, 1998). Pp.xxiv + 242. H/b ISBN 1 85285 153 8, [pounds]40). This book provides the first survey of the growing involvement of county quarter-sessions in the provision of England's...

English Merchants in Seventeenth-Century Italy.(Review)
April 1, 1999... GIGLIOLA PAGANO DE DIVITIIS, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997; Italian edition 1990. Pp.xv + 202; maps. H/back ISBN 0521 58031 5, [pounds]35). In the first two or three decades after World War II a large number of early-modern...

Morality and the Market in Victorian Britain.(Review)
April 1, 1999... G.R. SEARLE, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. Pp.xi + 300. H/back ISBN 0 19 820698 4, [pounds]45). In his latest book, Geoffrey Searle moves beyond his earlier terrain of entrepreneurial politics in mid-Victorian Britain to the wider field...

Conceiving Companies: Joint Stock Politics in Victorian England.(Review)
April 1, 1999... TIMOTHY L. ALBORN, (London: Routledge, 1998. Pp.ix + 297. H/b ISBN 0 415 18079 1, [pounds]50). The company, and its relationship to state and market institutions, lies at the centre of much debate in business history. A book exploring the...

A History of Water in Modern England and Wales.(Review)
April 1, 1999... JOHN HASSAN, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998. Pp.x + 214. H/b ISBN 0 7190 43908 5, [pounds]45). A somewhat neglected topic poised between the disciplines of economic and environmental history, the water industry is given...

The Royal Small Arms Factory: Enfield and Its Workers.(Review)
April 1, 1999... DAVID PAM, (Enfield: the author, 1998. Pp.213; illus.; maps. H/b ISBN 0 9532271 0 3, [pounds]14). This nicely produced and richly illustrated book will doubtless make a welcome gift for anyone interested in the history of small arms...

Vapeur et Revolution Industrielle a Marseille: 1831-1857.(Review)
April 1, 1999... XAVIER DAUMALIN and MARCEL COURDURIE, (Marseilles: Chambre de Commerce et d'Industrie Marseilles-Provence, 1997. Pp.xii + 374; illus. P/back ISBN 2 900732 13 1. FF180). Vapeur et Revolution Industrielle a Marseille represents Part XII of...

L'Echelle du monde. Essai sur l'industrialisation de l'Occident.(Review)
April 1, 1999... PATRICK VERLEY, (Paris: Gallimard, 1997. Pp.713. H/back ISBN 2 07 074686 0, FF230). As a long-time specialist of the history of the first industrialisation, Patrick Verley has finally completed this huge and ambitious task. There are, in...

The Brandy Trade Under the Ancien Regime: Regional Specialisation in the Charente.(Review)
April 1, 1999... L.M. CULLEN, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp.xvii + 284. H/back ISBN 0 521 59248 8. [pounds]40). In a manner reminiscent of a recent advertisement for lager, Louis Cullen claims that Cognac is perhaps the most remarkable...

Actes du 5e colloque d'histoire de l'informatique.(Review)
April 1, 1999... FRANCOIS RODRIGUEZ and JEAN VIGNOLLE (eds.), (Toulouse: Cepadues Editions, 1998. Pp.232. P/back ISBN 2 85428 472, no price given). This volume is a collection of papers presented to the fifth conference on the history, of computer science...

Le Monde, 1944-1995: Historie d'une Enterprise de Presse.(Review)
April 1, 1999... PATRICK EVENO, (Paris: Le Monde-Editions, 1996. Pp.540. P/back ISBN 2 87899 143 5, FF160). 'Better to lose money than to lose readers' - this, the opinion of the managing editor of Le Monde, Jacques Fauvet, in 1977, is a succinct summary...

De IJzeren weg in een land vol water. Beknote geschiedenis van de spoorwegen in Nederland: 1834-1958.(Review)
April 1, 1999... A.J. VEENENDAAL Jr., (Amsterdam: De Bataafsche Leeuw, 1998. pp. 192: illus. H/back ISBN 90 6707 461 6, Dfl.46). As an historian one does not need to be a lover of railways to acknowledge their major role in economic history. They had...

Governance, Industry, and Labour Markets in Britain and France: Modernising State in the Mid-Twentieth Century.(Review)
April 1, 1999... NOEL WHITESIDE and ROBERT SALAIS (eds.), (London and New York: Routledge, 1998. Pp.xi + 295; figures. H/back ISBN 0 415 15733 1, [pounds]50). This volume has a dual purpose. First, to clarify why Britain was less successful than France in...

La navegacion regular de cabotaje en Espana en los siglos XIX y XX Guerras de siecles, conferencias y consorcios navieros.(Review)
April 1, 1999... JESUS M. VALDALISO, (Vitoria-Gasteiz: Servicio Central de Publicaciones del Gobierno Vasco, 1997. Pp.120. P/back ISBN 84 457 1175 X, Pesetas 1,525). This book is a well documented and stimulating analysis of the entrepreneurial strategies...

Merchant Moscow: Images of Russia's Vanished Bourgeoisie.(Review)
April 1, 1999... JAMES L. WEST and IURII A. PETROV (eds.), (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998. Pp.ix + 189; illus.; maps. H/backISBN 0 691 012490, [pounds]30). This book offers a series of short essays which are designed to accompany a...

La industria del calzado en Espana, 1860-1959. La formacion de una industria moderna y los efectos del intervencionismo estatal.(Review)
April 1, 1999... JOSE ANTONIO MIRANDA ENCARNACION, (Alicante: Generalitat Valenciana. Conselleria de Cultura, Educacio I Ciencia. Instituto de Cultura, 'Juan Gil-Albert', Diputacion Provincial de Alicante, 1998. Pp.380. ISBN 84 7784 294 9, no price given). ...

Zwischen Kleinstadt und Weltmarkt: Hohner und die Harmonika: 1857-1961. Unternehmensgeschichte als Gesellschaftgeschichte.(Review)
April 1, 1999... HARTMUT BERGHOFF, (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schoningh, 1997. Pp.670; illus., maps. H/back ISBN 3 506 70785 X, DM 58). At first glance, perhaps, the history of a firm making mouth organs, even a world famous brand such as Hohner, does not appear...

Selected Cliometric Studies on German Economic History.(Review)
April 1, 1999... JOHN KOMLOS and SCOTT EDDIE (eds.), (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1997. Pp.369. P/back ISBN 3 5154 06899 6, DM 78). This anthology reprints 17 recent articles on German economic history of the late nineteenth century to the 1950s, with...

Central Europe in the Twentieth Century: An Economic History Perspective.(Review)
April 1, 1999... ALICE TEICHOVA (ed.), (Aldershot: Gower, 1997. Pp.xiii + 174; maps. H/back ISBN 1 85928 1052, [pounds]50). The book consists of a collection of eight articles inspired by the post-1989 economic and political transformation in central Europe...

Missionaries and Managers: American Influences on European Management Education.(Review)
April 1, 1999... T.R. GOURVISH and N. TIRATSOO (eds.), 1945-60 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998. Pp.x + 165. H/back ISBN 0 7190 5156 8, [pounds]40). Arising out of a project entitled 'The Development of Business Schools in Europe', which was...

The Americanisation of European Business: The Marshall Plan and the Transfer of US Management Models.(Review)
April 1, 1999... MATTHIAS KIPPING and OVE BJARNAR (eds.), (London: Routledge, 1998. Pp.xv + 235. H/back ISBN 0 415 17191 1, [pounds]50). Against the background of current attempts to transfer 'Western' technology and management methods to the former Soviet...

Servants of the Honourable Company: Work, Discipline, and Conflict in the Hudson's Bay Company, 1770-1879.(Review)
April 1, 1999... EDITH I. BURLEY, (Toronto: Oxford University Press Canada, 1997. Pp.v + 319. P/back ISBN 0 19 541296, [pounds]10.50). As the title of this book clearly suggests, Burley is interested in those who were hired as servants by the Hudson's Bay...

The Golden Ghetto: The American Commercial Community at Canton and the Shaping of American China Policy.(Review)
April 1, 1999... JACQUES M. DOWNS, (Bethlehem: Lehigh University Press; London: Associated University Presses. 1997. Pp.495; illus.; map: tables; index. H/back ISBN 0 934223 35 1, [pounds]55). Peter Ward Fay's foreword to this book tells us that it is a...

Angels of the Workplace: Women and the Construction of Gender Relations in the Canadian Clothing Industry.(Review)
April 1, 1999... MERCEDES STEEDMAN, (Oxford and Toronto: Oxford University Press Canada, 1997. Pp.ix + 333. ISBN 0 19 541308 3, [pounds]9.99). In some respects this book makes depressingly familiar reading. In the Canadian clothing industry, as in other...

A Fabric of Defeat: The Politics of South Carolina Millhands, 1910-1948.(Review)
April 1, 1999... BRYANT SIMON, (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1998. Pp.xvi + 345; illus.; maps; tables: appendix; bibliography. H/back ISBN 0 8078 2401 I, [pounds]37.95; p/back ISBN 0 8078 4704 6, [pounds]14.95). Just as Britain has,...

The Business of Benevolence: Industrial Paternalism in Progressive America.(Review)
April 1, 1999... ANDREA TONE, (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 1997. Pp.xii + 264: illus. H/back ISBN 0 8014 3028 3, $39.95). The origins of and motivation behind welfare reform during the Progressive Era have long been the subject of...

Modern Manors: Welfare Capitalism and the New Deal.(Review)
April 1, 1999... SANFORD M. JACOBY, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997. Pp.345. H/back ISBN 0 691 01570 8, $35/[pounds]29.95). Why do we find the benevolence of greedy institutions so alluring? As Orson Welles appreciated, there is an...

Personalities and Products: A Historical Perspective on Advertising in America.(Review)
April 1, 1999... EDD APPLEGATE, (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1988. Pp.xii + 178. H/back ISBN 0 31330364 9, [pounds]46.50). It is not easy to see a market for this book. Its author, Edd Applegate, is interested in individuals, the 'individuals who, in...

From Company Doctors to Managed Care: The United Mineworkers' Noble Experiment.(Review)
April 1, 1999... IVANA KRAJCINOVIC, Cornell Studies in Labor Relations, 31 (Ithaca, NY: ILR Press, 1997. Pp.xiv + 212. ISBN 0 8014 3392 4, $37.50). This monograph focuses on the period when the United Mine Workers controlled the healthcare plan of its...

Consuming Power: A Social History of American Energies.(Review)
April 1, 1999... DAVID E. NYE, (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998. Pp.xii + 331; illus. H/back ISBN 0 262 14063 2, [pounds]19.95). This lively and entertaining synthesis draws on a wealth of scholarship to chart the changing sources and uses of energy in the...

The American Economy: The Struggle for Supremacy in the 21st Century.(Review)
April 1, 1999... NICHOLAS SPULBER, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Pp.xvii + 286. P/back ISBN 0 521 59583 5. [pounds]16.95). Though this book is rather prophetically titled, and contains a strong advocacy for how things should be done in...

How America Got On-Line: Politics, Markets and the Revolution in Telecommunications.(Review)
April 1, 1999... ALAN STONE, (Armonk. NY, and London: M.E. Sharpe, 1997. Pp.xiii + 241. H/back ISBN 1 56324 576 0, [pounds]50.50; p/back ISBN I 56234 577 9, [pounds]19.95). Less than two decades ago, the telephone, television and computer were regarded as...

The Records of American Business.(Review)
April 1, 1999... JAMES M. O'TOOLE, (Chicago, IL: Society of American Archivists, 1997. Pp.xvii + 411. H/back ISBN 931828 45 7, [pounds]39.45). This valuable book is focused on debates concerning the state and role of business archives in the United States,...

Small Business Entrepreneurs in Asia and Europe: Towards a Comparative Perspective.(Review)
April 1, 1999... M. RUTTEN and C. UPADHYA (eds.), (London, New Delhi, Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1997. Pp.334. H/back ISBN 0 8039 9381 1, [pounds]25). This book is a collection of essays which focus on the theme of entrepreneurship in small business in an...

Capitalism and Nationalism at the End of Empire: State and Business in Decolonizing Egypt, Nigeria, and Kenya.(Review)
April 1, 1999... ROBERT L. TIGNOR, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 1998. Pp.viii + 429. H/back ISBN 0 691 01584 8, [pounds]35). This is a comparative study of the relations between the state and private businesses during decolonisation in three...

Management Practices and Business Development in Pakistan: 1947-1988.(Review)
April 1, 1999... NAVEED HASAN, (Aldershot: Avebury, 1997. Pp.xiii + 340. H/back ISBN 1 85972, [pounds]45). This book sets out to show how a systems approach to strategy can influence management development. It focuses on the control and execution of...

The Price of Wealth: Economies and Institutions in the Middle East.(Review)
April 1, 1999... KIREN AZIZ CHAUDRY, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997. Pp.xiii + 330. H/back ISBN 0 8014 3164 6, [pounds]35.50; p/back [pounds]15.95). The sensational quadrupling of the oil price in 1973 precipitated the largest and most rapid...

The Economics of World War II: Six Great Powers in International Comparison.(Review)
April 1, 1999... MARK HARRISON (ed.), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp.xxiii + 307. ISBN 0 521 62046 5, [pounds]35). This edited volume examines the contribution of economics to victory and defeat among the great powers in World War II. Its...

Creating Modern Capitalism: How Entrepreneurs, Companies, and Countries Triumphed in Three Industrial Revolutions.(Review)
April 1, 1999... THOMAS K. McCRAW (ed.), (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997. Pp.xi + 711. H/back ISBN 0 674 17555 7, $39.95; p/back ISBN 0 674 17556 5, $19.95). Tom McCraw and a team of colleagues from the Harvard Business School have produced...

Consuming People: From Political Economy to Theatres of Consumption.(Review)
April 1, 1999... A. FUAT FIRAT and NIKHILESH DHOLAKIA, (London: Routledge, 1988, Pp.xii + 194. H/back ISBN 0 415 16680 2, [pounds]45). Consuming People is a book about the politics of consumer society in our apparently post-modern age. It is an attempt to...

Between Class and Market: Postwar Unionization in the Capitalist Democracies.(Review)
April 1, 1999... BRUCE WESTERN, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997. Pp.xx + 230. H/back ISBN 0 691 01617 8, [pounds]32.50). Bruce Western brings together sociological and economic approaches to trade union growth or decline in a wide-ranging...

From Family Firms to Corporate Capitalism: Essays in Business and Industrial History in Honour of Peter Mathias.(Review)
April 1, 1999... KRISTINE BRULAND and PATRICK O'BRIEN (eds), (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Pp. xxv + 362; illus.; tables.H/back ISBN 0 19 829046 2. [pounds]45). All of the contributors to this festschrift (except for Patrick O'Brien who writes...

Foreign Direct Investment and Governments: Catalysts for Economic Restructuring.(Review)
April 1, 1999... JOHN H. DUNNING and RAJNEESH NARULA, (London: Routledge, 1996. Pp.xiv + 455. H/back ISBN 0 415 11820 4, [pounds]45; p/back ISBN 0 415 17355 8, [pounds]19.95). International business is regarded as a critical catalyst in the globalisation...

Institutions and Economic Change: New Perspectives on Markets, Firms and Technology.(Review)
April 1, 1999... KLAUS NIELSEN and BJORN JOHNSON (eds), (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 1998. Pp.xxviii + 300; H/back ISBN 1 85898 322 3, [pounds]55). The concept of the institution has become very important in the analysis of both societal cohesion and economic...

Management Innovators: The People and Ideas That Have Shaped Modern Business.(Review)
April 1, 1999... DANIEL A. WREN and RONALD G. GREENWOOD, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Pp.x + 254. H/back ISBN 0 19 511705 0, $25). This book traverses time topically, that is, its topic corresponds to the different state of management at...