Business History articles from October 1 1991

Business History archives from October 1 1991

Misleading accounts? Pitfalls for Historians. (four ways accounting records and financial statements can mislead historians)
October 1, 1991... Accounting records and the financial statements prepared from them (both of which are commonly referred to in the UK as |accounts') are an important source of information for historians. They have been used in a number of different ways: ...

The expansion and development of a private business: an application of vertical integration theory.
October 1, 1991... The neo-classical view of the firm held that its growth beyond a certain scale was improbably as a result of the assumption of declining returns built into the theory of monopolistic competition.[1] In recent years institutional economists have...

Science, marketing and foreign competition in the yeast trade, 1860-1918.
October 1, 1991... In 1860 British distillers regained the right to sell yeast produced during the distilling process, a privilege withdrawn in the excise reforms of 1823. The market which they sought to re-enter, in yeast for baking, was regarded as a German...

A price for every product, every place: the International Steel Export Cartel, 1933-39.
October 1, 1991... Our industry is more than national, it is supremely international. No industry in the world pools its knowledge and its friendship more regularly than the steel industry. The breakdown of the domestic and international steel organizations...

George Livesey and profit sharing: a comment on some recent literature.
October 1, 1991... In a digest of recent articles with a business history interest,[1] attention has been given to an article on profit sharing in the gas industry.[2] This outlines the progress and effectiveness of the profit sharing scheme set up at the South...

The Corporate State and the Broker State: The Du Ponts and American National Politics, 1925-1940.
October 1, 1991... Robert F. Burk, The Corporate State and the Broker State: The Du Ponts American National Politics, 1925-1940 (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1990. Pp.xi + 27.95[pounds] David A. Hounshell and John Kenly Smith, Jr., Science...

Science and Corporate Strategy: Du Pont R&D, 1902-1980.
October 1, 1991... Robert F. Burk, The Corporate State and the Broker State: The Du Ponts American National Politics, 1925-1940 (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1990. Pp.xi + 27.95[pounds] David A. Hounshell and John Kenly Smith, Jr., Science...

Alfred I. Du Pont and His Family.
October 1, 1991... Robert F. Burk, The Corporate State and the Broker State: The Du Ponts American National Politics, 1925-1940 (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1990. Pp.xi + 27.95[pounds] David A. Hounshell and John Kenly Smith, Jr., Science...

Class Formation and Urban Industrial Society: Bradford, 1750-1850.
October 1, 1991... If it is true that Britain's new Prime Minister desires a |classless society' then it it is equally that his long-life predecessor desired a triumph of the |middle class', or rather, she meant, the triumph of the entrepreneurial class....

The First Latin American Debt Crisis: The City of London and the 1822-25 Loan Bubble.
October 1, 1991... The satirical exaggerations of Anthony Trollope in The Way We Live Now are as nothing compared with the gallery of rogues and heroes in Dawson's study of the loans to Latin America in the 1820s. Augustus Melmotte is a prosaic figure compared...

Central Bank, Peripheral Industry: The Bank of England in the Provinces, 1826-1913.
October 1, 1991... Dieter Ziegler's book is based on his contribution to a project on British economic policy and manufacturing industry in the period 1870-1913. Its focus is accurately captured in the title, the part played by the Bank of England in the...

Consett Iron: 1840-1980. A Study in Industrial Location.
October 1, 1991... This elegantly written account of the 140 year long history of one of Britain's most distinguished iron and steel companies deserves a wide readership. It explores the industrial and economic development of the Consett enterprise through all...

The Making of a Sugar Giant: Tate and Lyle, 1859-1989.
October 1, 1991... This massive volume has been a long time in the making. It originated as a doctoral thesis at the Sorbonne under the expert supervision of professors Caron and Crouzet and was submitted in 1981. It was published in French in 1983. This is a...

Fyffes and the Banana: Musa Sapientum, A Centenary History, 1888-1988.
October 1, 1991... The banana trade has been the subject of passionate debate for almost all of its 100-year history, principally because of the primacy of a small number of large highly integrated multinationals. It is only in recent years however, that...

Pioneers and Inheritors: Top management in the Coventry Motor Industry, 1896-1972.
October 1, 1991... We owe much to Coventry Polytechnic for the interest it has taken in the motor industry in that city since Kenneth Richardson's pioneer volume appeared in 1977. His colleague, Joan Lane, produced a very detailed Register of Business Records of...

Transport and the Development of the European Economy: 1750-1918.
October 1, 1991... Transport is still something of a neglected dimension in economic development despite the fact that its share in European GDP more than doubled in the nineteenth century. Simon Ville's new study only partially remedies this lacuna. It covers...

The Dutch in the Atlantic Slave Trade: 1600-1815.
October 1, 1991... The author asserts his intention to place the Dutch role in the Atlantic slave trade in |proper perspective' (p.xi). He succeeds in large part. He has produced a thorough account of the organization and operation of the Dutch slave trade in...

The Middle Classes in Europe, 1789-1914: France, Germany, Italy and Russia.
October 1, 1991... The starting point for this comparative study of the middle classes in four European countries is the French Revolution. Characterised by Marx and Engels as an instrument of immutable social change, one of the striking conclusions of this book...

The French Economy in the Nineteenth Century: An Essay in Econometric Analysis.
October 1, 1991... Relatively few specialist works in economic history are translated from the French within five years of publication; The prompt appearance of The French Economy in the Nineteenth Century no doubt a tribute to its originality and the fruit of an...

German Yearbook on Business History: 1988.
October 1, 1991... Although understandable from its genesis, the fact that this valuable annual volume of translations is entitled business history may cause other kinds of historian to overlook it. This would be a pity, as the range of content of the four...

Hostile Brothers: Competition and Closure in the European Electronics Industry.
October 1, 1991... This is a wide-ranging, ambitious study of recent changes in government-industry relations in the telecommunications and consumer electronic industries in West Germany, France and United Kingdom. The particular concern of the book is to analyse...

Oil and Politics in the Gulf: Rulers and Merchants in Kuwait and Qatar.
October 1, 1991... This book analyses the impact of oil on the formation, destruction and nature of political coalitions in the Gulf states of Kuwait and Qatar. It is also about money and power and the ways in which leaders and economic elites, rules and...

Accountancy Comes of Age: The Development of an American Profession, 1886-1940.
October 1, 1991... Accounting is one of the new professions in both Great Britain and the United States. In Britain, provincial societies were established in Scottish and English cities beginning in the 1850s and 1870s respectively. The first |national'...

Global Enterprises and the World Economy: Ford, General Motors, and IBM: The Emergence of the Transnational Enterprise.
October 1, 1991... It must be a sore temptation for any reviewer of a new book on multinational enterprise (MNE) to preface their remarks with a comment about the veritable mountain of literature now available on this topic. In these terms, it is clearly...

The Transformation of Corporate Control.
October 1, 1991... This is not an easy book to read. The author is a sociologist. He has a tin ear, and many of his usages grate on mine. Harvard University Press has done a beautiful production job on the book, which is excellent value for money, but does not...

New and Improved: The Story of Mass Marketing in America.
October 1, 1991... Alfred Chandler opened up to business historians a whole new area of enquiry when he charted the growth of major American corporations. Responding to key developments such as population trends and the growth of communications, they learned to...

Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women.
October 1, 1991... Understanding the Gender Gap marks a milestone in women's history. This is a piece of outstanding scholarship based on exhaustive primary research and a high level of economic reasoning which has the courage to attack head-on the three most...

Foreign Business in Japan Before World War II.
October 1, 1991... Over the years the published papers of the annual Fuji Conferences have become major additions to the repertoire of international business history. The present volume, the sixteenth, is a most worthy addition to the series. Taking a relatively...

British Enterprise in Brazil: The St John d'el Rey Mining Company and the Morro Velho Gold Mine, 1830-1960.
October 1, 1991... This book is not a simple exercise in company or business history. While it manages to tell the story of the St John Co. in some detail, it goes far beyond that to assess the company's role in the broader economic and social development of the...

Technology and the Pursuit of Economic Growth.
October 1, 1991... This book brings together articles written over the last decade by the two authors, covering the nineteenth century to the present day. The scope of the book, as befits a work on technology, is international, but focuses on the United States....

International Directory of Company Histories, vol. 2.
October 1, 1991... This is the second of a five-volume series and it covers companies in the following industries: electrical and electronic; entertainment and leisure; financial services - banks; financial services - non-banks; food products; food services and...

The World Television Industry: An Economic Analysis.
October 1, 1991... In 1984 the average British adult watched 3.1 hours of television per day. It is surprising that economists and historians have paid so little attention to an activity which occupies one eighth of our lives. This book is written at a level...

Banks as Multinationals.
October 1, 1991... This book is the result of an international conference on the subject held at Reading University in August 1989. The 14 essays fall into three categories: those which take an international or general perspective, those which are...

Global Corporate Strategy and Trade Policy.
October 1, 1991... This book is perhaps best regarded as a framework to structure a discussion of the 1986-88 Canada-USA free trade negotiations. It is asserted that the world economy is dominated by trial power - intense global competition between the firms of...

Enterprise and Competitiveness: A Systems View of International Business.
October 1, 1991... Much of the material presented in this volume has appeared elsewhere, either in the form of conference papers or as contributions to edited works. Nevertheless, we must be grateful to mark Casson for collecting and reworking his papers on...

The Brewing Industry: A Guide to Historical Records.
October 1, 1991... It could be disconcerting to discover a helpful book such as this. For that little bit of research one had in mind using a discrete collection of archives at the local record office suddenly seems more involved. the company's records, one now...

Records of British Business and Industry, 1760-1914: Textiles and Leather.
October 1, 1991... This volume is the first in a series describing the records of British business and industry based on the resources of the National Register of Archives. The series was initiated some years ago by the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts...