Business History articles from July 1998

Business History archives from July 1998

Mass production without the factory: craft producers, guns and small firm innovation, 1790-1815.
July 1, 1998... Historians have come to reject the easy equation between industrialisation and the factory, recognising instead the complex interrelationship that existed between large- and small-scale industry throughout the eighteenth, as well as the...

Willard D. Straight and the diplomacy of international finance during the First World War. (banker and diplomat)
July 1, 1998... Historians have differed as to whether the First World War was characterised by Anglo-American co-operation or by fierce competition, particularly in the economic sphere.(1) Several, notably Burton I. Kaufman and Carl P. Parrini, have argued that...

Just-in-time inventories in Old Detroit.
July 1, 1998... The fascination of North American scholars with the Japanese automobile industry (and with Japanese capitalism more generally) has centred on the keiretsu, a set of interlocking ownership and resource dependencies that connect core industrial...

The business doctors: accountants in British management for the nineteenth century to the present day.
July 1, 1998... The amateur nature of British management historically seems to be widely taken for granted by business historians. Locke has argued that the unqualified state of management since the nineteenth century, and the failure of the British higher...

The Australian mining industry council, 1967-75.
July 1, 1998... By any measure the political activity of large firms and peak associations of business has increased substantially since the late 1960s.(1) This has been traced to the end of the long boom that followed the Second World War and the outbreak of...

The Nature of Industrialization, vol 5: International Trade and British Economic Growth from the Eighteenth Century to the Present Day.
July 1, 1998... PETER MATHIAS and JOHN A. DAVIS (eds.), (Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1996. Pp. 169; ISBN 0 631 18116 4, [pounds]40). In a field replete with debates, few aspects of the history of modern economic growth have proved so...

The Business of Abolishing the British Slave Trade: 1783-1807.
July 1, 1998... JUDITH JENNINGS, (London: Frank Cass, 1997. Pp.157. H/back, ISBN 0 7146 46970, [pounds]30; p/back ISBN 0 7146 42355, [pounds]15). The British slave trade was abolished by Act of Parliament in March 1807, an Act which came 20 years after the...

The Industrial Age: Economy and Society in Britain, 1750-1995.
July 1, 1998... CHARLES MORE, (Harlow: Addison Wesley Longman Ltd, 2nd edn. 1997. Pp.xv + 440; illus; maps. P/back ISBN 0 582 27767 1, [pounds]18.99). Though not a book for the specialist business historian, The Industrial Age is well worth the attention of...

The Productivity Race: British Manufacturing in International Perspective, 1850-1990.
July 1, 1998... S.N. BROADBERRY, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Pp.xxv + 451. ISBN 0 521 58440 X, [pounds]45). This is an excellent book which deals imaginatively with the theme of Britain's relative decline. There are three main sections. The...

Industrial Policy in Britain, 1945-1951: Economic Planning, Nationalisation and the Labour Governments.
July 1, 1998... MARTIN CHICK, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Pp.xvi + 221; tables. H/back ISBN 0 521 48291 7, [pounds]35). Devotees of the Attlee government, and all who are interested in post-war British economic history, will welcome the...

The Politics of Planning: The Debate on Economic Planning in the 1930s.
July 1, 1998... DANIEL RITSCHEL, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Pp.x + 367. ISBN 0 19 820647 X, [pounds]40). Over the past 20 years our understanding of the nature of the Keynesian revolution has become much more sophisticated. The old conventional...

Industry and Air Power: The Expansion of British Aircraft Production, 1935-41.
July 1, 1998... SEBASTIAN RITCHIE, (London: Frank Cass, 1997. Pp.xvi + 283. ISBN 0 7146 4724 1, [pounds]37.50). Sebastian Ritchie's book describes and seeks to explain the growth of production in the aircraft industry during the critical period of rearmament...

State Corporatism and Proto-Industry: The Wuttemberg Black Forest, 1580-1797.
July 1, 1998... SHEILAGH OGILVIE, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Pp.xx + 513; illus., maps. H/back ISBN 0 521 372097, [pounds]55). In this book Ogilvie, a social historian and expert in the field of proto-industrialisation, provides a case study...

Merchants, Bankers, Middlemen: The Amsterdam Money Market During the First Half of the 19th Century.
July 1, 1998... JOOST JONKER, (Amsterdam: NEHA, 1997. Pp.383; illus; graphs. H/back ISBN 90 5742 001 5, Dutch guilders 59.90). In many books the subtitle says it all and the main title is but an attempt by the author to attract a wider audience by pretending...

Chedde: un siecle d'industrie au pays du Mont Blanc.
July 1, 1998... LUDOVIC CAILLUET, (Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble:, 1997. Pp.187; illus.; maps. P/back ISBN 2 7061 0731 6, FF 160). Already in the eighteenth century, the river Arve, rising from the Mont Blanc Massive, was used as a source of...

Rebuilding the Financial System in Central and Eastern Europe: 1918-1994.
July 1, 1998... PHILIP L. COTTRELL (ed.), (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1997. Pp.xii + 177. H/back ISBN 1859284132, [pounds]39.50). Was there a financial system in central and eastern Europe before the First World War? Well, there was no one system, even if the...

A Rocky Road: The Irish Economy Since the 1920s.
July 1, 1998... CORMAC O GRADA, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997. Pp.xv + 246. H/back ISBN 0 7190 4583 5, [pounds]35; p/back ISBN 0 7190 4584 3, [pounds]13.99). Until recently, as O Grada notes in the final chapter of his excellent book, the...

Cities of Finance: Proceedings of the Colloquium, Amsterdam, May 1991.
July 1, 1998... H.A. DIEDERIKS and D. REEDER (eds.), (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1996. Pp.vii + 320; illus.; maps. ISBN 0 444 85800 8, F1.85). One could argue that Max Weber, author of The City, originally published in 1921, would have been content with this...

Big Business: The European Experience in the Twentieth Century.
July 1, 1998... YOUSSEF CASSIS, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Pp.x + 277; tables; H/back ISBN 0 19 828965 0, [pounds]35). This book is a comparative study of big business in Great Britain, Germany and France in the twentieth century. Using Britain as...

European Enterprise: Strategies of Adaptation and Renewal in the Twentieth Century.
July 1, 1998... MARGARITA DRITSAS and TERRY GOURVISH (eds.), (Athens: Trochalia Publications, 1997. Pp.310. P/back ISBN 960 7809 02 5, [pounds]25). The aim of this book edited by Margarita Dritsas and Terry Gourvish is to examine the structures and the...

Petrofina, un groupe petrolier international et la gestion de l'incertitude, vol 1: 1920-1979.
July 1, 1998... MICHEL DUMOULIN, (Louvain La Neuve: Peeters, 1997. Pp.235. ISBN 90 6831 900, 0.900BF). The history of the main oil companies (the seven sisters) is well known and has already been the subject of major business histories. Much has, for example,...

100 Jahre LKW: Geschichte und Zukunft des Nutzfahrzeuges.
July 1, 1998... HARRY NIEMANN and ARMIN HERMANN (eds.), (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1997. Pp.413. ISBN 3 515 07053 2, DM144). This volume contains the papers of the third Interdisciplinary Conference on the motor industry and business history, organised...

Labour, Social Policy and the Welfare State.
July 1, 1998... AD KNOTTER, BERT ALTENA and DIRK DAMSMA (eds.), (Amsterdam: Stichting beheer IISG, 1997. Pp. 198; maps. P/back ISBN 90 6861 120 8, NLf. 39.50). The ninth British-Dutch Conference on Labour History, which met in Bergen in 1994, (the...

Ships for the Seven Seas: Philadelphia Shipbuilding in the Age of Industrial Capitalism.
July 1, 1998... THOMAS R. HEINRICH, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. Pp.x + 290; illus.; maps. ISBN 0 8018 5387 7, [pounds]33). Philadelphia was one of the main centres of the American shipbuilding industry in the half century or so after the...

A Social History of American Technology.
July 1, 1998... RUTH SCHWARTZ COWAN, (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Pp.x + 342; illus., maps. H/back ISBN 0 19 504606 4, [pounds]37.95; p/back ISBN 0 19 504605 6, [pounds]16.95). The author of the acclaimed More Work for Mother (New York,...

Early American Railroads: Franz Anton Ritter von Gerstner's 'Die innern Communicationen' (1842-1843).
July 1, 1998... FREDERICK C. GAMST (ed.), (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997. Pp.844; illus.; tables; map. H/back ISBN 08047 2423 7, $95/[pounds]65). This voluminous book is a superb source for early American transportation history from an unexpected...

Safety First: Technology, Labor, and Business in the Building of American Work Safety, 1870-1939.
July 1, 1998... MARK ALDRICH, (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. Pp.xx + 415; illus. ISBN 0 8018 5405 9, $49.95). Safety First is the first comprehensive history of changes in workplace safety in the United States. It places these changes in...

Character Is Capital: Successful Manuals and Manhood in Gilded Age America.
July 1, 1998... JUDY HILKEY, (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. Pp.210; illus. H/back ISBN 0 8078 2353 8, $39.95; p/back ISBN 0 8078 4658 9, $17.95) This book on the cultural history of the success manual in Gilded Age America is a...

The Architects and the City: Holabird and Roche of Chicago, 1880-1918.
July 1, 1998... ROBERT BRUEGMANN, (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1997. Pp.xvi + 540; illus. + maps. ISBN 0 226 07695, $30). Architecture has rarely featured in accounts of American industrialisation and the subject has meant little to business...

The Promise of Private Pensions: The First Hundred Years.
July 1, 1998... STEVEN A. SASS, (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1997. Pp.ix + 333. H/back ISBN 0 674 94520 4, [pounds]26.50). Steven A. Sass is editor of the Regional Review of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. In this book he considers...

Universal Service: Competition, Interconnection, and Monopoly in the Making of the American Telephone System.
July 1, 1998... MILTON MUELLER Jr., (Cambridge, MA, and Washington, DC: MIT Press and AEI Press, 1997. Pp. xiii + 213; illus. H/back ISBN 0 262 13327 X, $55.50). Between 1894 and 1914 the United States witnessed perhaps the most intense competition the...

WCFL: Chicago's Voice of Labor, 1926-1978.
July 1, 1998... NATHAN GODFRIED, (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1997. Pp.xix + 391. H/back ISBN 0 252 02287 4, $49.95; p/back ISBN 0 252 06592 1, $19.95). Nathan Godfried has written about a fascinating subject: the history of the Chicago...

Empresa e Historia en America Latina: un balance historiografico.
July 1, 1998... CARLOS DAVILA L. DE GUEVARA (ed.), (Bogota: Terco Mundo S.A., 1996. Pp.xxvi + 225. P/back 958 601 684 6, no price). The literature on Latin American business history is limited and incompletely understood in Britain, but this book is a timely...

The Rise, Decline, and Renewal of Silicon Valley's High Technology Industry.
July 1, 1998... DAN M. KHANNA, (New York and London: Garland Publishing Inc., 1997. Pp.xiv + 181. H/back ISBN 0 8153 2724 2, $21). This slim volume, described as a 'personal journey', is an account by a Silicon Valley participant of the ups and downs of the...

Innovation in Japan.
July 1, 1998... A. GOTO and H. ODAGIRI (eds.), (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. Pp.viii + 311. ISBN 0 19 828985 5, [pounds]40). The role of innovation in the success of Japanese firms, and in that of the Japanese economy as a whole, has been often referred to...

Entrepreneurship and Economic Development in Hong Kong.
July 1, 1998... TONY FU-LAI YU, (London and New York: Routledge, 1997. Pp.xv + 240. H/back ISBN 0 415 16240 8, [pounds]45). Hong Kong's economic success has attracted a great deal of attention from business economists. In just over three decades Hong Kong has...

China's New Business Elite: The Political Consequences of Economic Reform.
July 1, 1998... MARGARET M. PEARSON, (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997. Pp.x + 207. H/back ISBN 0 520 20718 1, $35). China opened its doors to foreign investment in 1979, and since then a new business elite has arisen. Academia knows so...

Big Business and the Wealth of Nations.
July 1, 1998... ALFRED D. CHANDLER, Jr, FRANCO AMATORI and TAKASHI HIKINO (eds.), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Pp.xii + 574. H/back ISBN 0 521 48123 6, [pounds]40). Nineteen contributions, 18 contributors, a workshop in Florence and an...

World Investment Report 1997: Transnational Corporations, Market Structure and Competition Policy.
July 1, 1998... UNITED NATIONS CONFERENCE ON TRADE AND DEVELOPMENT, (New York and Geneva: United Nations, 1997. Pp.xxxv + 381. ISBN 92 1 112413 1, $35). This is the seventh annual World Investment Report, which, under the editorship of Karl Sauvant, has become...

Banking, Trade and Industry: Europe, America and Asia from the Thirteenth to the Twentieth Century.
July 1, 1998... ALICE TEICHOVA, GINETTE KURGAN-VAN HENTENRYK and DIETER ZIEGLER (eds.), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Pp.xv + 427. ISBN 0 521 57361 0, [pounds]45). Such an ambitious book seems an inaccessible challenge. However, the diversity...

Pattern in Corporate Evolution.
July 1, 1998... NElL M. KAY, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Pp.xviii+ 319. ISBN 0 19829047, [pounds]35). Neil Kay tackles a number of questions that fundamentally concern the business historian. Why do firms exist at all, and what determines their...

Transaction Cost Economics: Recent Developments.
July 1, 1998... CLAUDE MENARD (ed.), (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 1997. Pp.xvi + 167. H/back ISBN 1 85898 483 1, [pounds]39.95). This collection of six essays is the outcome of a conference held at the Sorbonne in 1994, although two contributions, by Williamson...

Worlds of Possibilities: Flexibility and Mass Production.
July 1, 1998... C.F. SABEL and J. ZEITLIN (eds.), (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pp.ix + 524. ISBN 0 521 495 555, $79.95/[pounds]35). During the 1970s the profound difficulties which faced Western capitalism at the end of the post-war long boom...

A History of Corporate Finance.
July 1, 1998... JONATHAN BARRON BASKIN and PAUL J. MIRANTI, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Pp.x + 350. H/back ISBN 0 521 55514 0, [pounds]24.95/$29.95). This book seeks to explain the development of corporate finance in terms of institutions...

Human Resources and the Firm in International Perspective.
July 1, 1998... ROBERT FITZGERALD and CHRISTOPHER ROWLEY (eds.), (Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1997. Volume 1 pp.xxvi + 469, Volume 2 pp.viii + 359. ISBN 1 85278 815 1, [pounds]175). This is the latest contribution to the well-established series the International...

Governments, Globalization, and International Business.
July 1, 1998... JOHN H. DUNNING (ed.), (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Pp.xviii + 518; illus. H/back ISBN 0 19 829068 3, [pounds]48). Governments, Globalization, and International Business is a collection of articles originally presented at a...

Pragmatism and the Political Economy of Cultural Revolution: 1850-1914.
July 1, 1998... JAMES LIVINGSTON, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. Pp.xxxi + 392. H/back ISBN 0 8078 2157 8, $39.95; p/back ISBN 0 8078 4664 3, $18.95). The opening pages of this book are not terribly encouraging. In the foreword, Alan...