Business History Review articles from December 1995

Business History Review archives from December 1995

J. & P. Coats in Tsarist Russia, 1889-1917. (cotton thread manufacturer)
December 22, 1995... Introduction Existing studies of foreign multinationals active in Russia concern mainly French, German or Belgian multinationals on the one hand, and foreign capital connected with heavy and extractive industries on the other. British...

From exit to voice in shopfloor governance: the case of company unions.
December 22, 1995... This paper offers a reexamination and reinterpretation of the emergence of company unions in the United States during the early 20th century. It is concerned with the motives, actions, and larger forces that led to the rise of company unions, as...

Competitive boosterism: how Milwaukee lost the Braves. (transfer of baseball franchise to Atlanta)
December 22, 1995... Baseball seasons of the mid-1990s, with a full lineup of striking players, rapacious owners, and disaffected fans, surely set records for most repetitions of the familiar refrain: "Baseball is a business, not a sport." The contemporary sports...

Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America.
December 22, 1995... Reviewed by Daniel Pope One might complain that the subtitle of Jackson Lears' new book constitutes a bit of false advertising. Fables of Abundance is broader than "A Cultural History of American Advertising," for Lears wants nothing less than...

Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben, and Rastus: Blacks in Advertising, Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow.
December 22, 1995... Reviewed by Kenneth W. Goings Marilyn Kern-Foxworth has written an interesting but ultimately very confused book. Its first half examines stereotypical images of African Americans in different types of advertising mediums. The text surveys...

For Each the Strength of All: A History of Banking in the State of New York.
December 22, 1995... Reviewed by Larry Schweikart As a "coffee table" book, this beautifully illustrated and entertaining volume is excellent. As a scholarly summary of banking in the state of New York, it is scarcely adequate. It is, however, only fair to...

Wal-Mart; A History of Sam Walton's Retail Phenomenon.
December 22, 1995... Reviewed by William B. Friedricks This book offers more than its title indicates. Rather than merely recounting the tale of Wal-Mart and its folksy founder, Sam Walton, the study uses the retailing giant to examine the evolution of marketing...

Co-op: The People's Business.
December 22, 1995... Reviewed by H. Vincent Moses By Johnston Birchall's own assertion, this is a celebration of human cooperation, especially among the working class peoples of Great Britain. Published on the 150th anniversary of the English Rochdale Pioneers'...

Democratic Miners: Work and Labor Relations in the Anthracite Coal Industry, 1875-1925.
December 22, 1995... Reviewed by Mary Ann Landis Until Perry Blatz's book, comparatively little research had been published dealing with the history of the anthracite mine workers and their union activities following the United Mine Workers' (UMWA) strike of 1902....

Merchant Capital and Economic Decolonization: The United Africa Company 1929-1987.
December 22, 1995... Reviewed by Mira Wilkins D. K. Fieldhouse's huge archive-based volume starts with a disclaimer that while the central focus of the book is the history of United Africa Company (UAC), 1929-1987, "this is not primarily a history of this company...

The Most Necessary Luxuries: The Mercers' Company of Coventry, 1550-1680.
December 22, 1995... Reviewed by Ronald H. Fritze During the late middle ages, Coventry was one of the leading regional cities of England. Building its prosperity on the surrounding rich lands that produced grain and wool in abundance, the city established thriving...

The Bank of England: Money, Power and Influence, 1694-1994.
December 22, 1995... Reviewed by Geoffrey Jones This collection of essays originated at a conference to mark the Bank of England's tercentenary. As its longevity suggests, the Bank has one of the most interesting and important histories of any financial...

Uneasy Partners: Big Business in American Politics, 1945-1990.
December 22, 1995... Reviewed by David Hart Kim McQuaid's new book attempts to provide a short synthesis of the history of big business in American politics during the Cold War. Because McQuaid is correct in his main thesis, that business was deeply involved in...

Creating the Modern South: Millhands and Managers in Dalton, Georgia, 1884-1984.
December 22, 1995... Reviewed by Annette C. Wright Using the Crown Cotton Mill of Dalton, Georgia, as a case study, Douglas Flamming has written a masterful treatment of southern industrialization. He skillfully builds on a wealth of detail about southern cotton...

Tangled Webs of History: Indians and the Law in Canada's Pacific Coast Fisheries.
December 22, 1995... Reviewed by Richard W. Judd Ever since publication of H. V. Nelles's Politics of Development (Toronto, 1974), Canadian historians have been reluctant to view conservation policy apart from the question of economic interest. Dianne Newell's...

The French Rothschilds: The Great Banking Dynasty Through Two Turbulent Centuries.
December 22, 1995... Reviewed by John McKay When the Broadway musical Fiddler on the Roof was staged in Israel, the catchy line that begins "If I were a rich man" was rendered into Hebrew as "If I were a Rothschild. . . ." A family and firm of mythic proportions,...

The Rothschilds: Essays on the History of a European Family.
December 22, 1995... Reviewed by John McKay When the Broadway musical Fiddler on the Roof was staged in Israel, the catchy line that begins "If I were a rich man" was rendered into Hebrew as "If I were a Rothschild. . . ." A family and firm of mythic proportions,...

One Hundred Years on the Road: The Traveling Salesman in American Culture.
December 22, 1995... Reviewed by John A. Agnew Many students of American economic history now see the 1890s as a crucial decade in the long-term transformation of the American economy from a set of local and regional economies in the early nineteenth century into...

The Making of Harcourt General: A History of Growth Through Diversification, 1922-1992.
December 22, 1995... Reviewed by Victoria Buenger and Robert E. Hoskisson For at least a decade casual business observers have needed a score card to keep track of the expanding and contracting business portfolios of our country's largest companies. Like the...

The South and the New Deal.
December 22, 1995... Reviewed by Thomas E. Terrill Skillfully combining both chronological and topical approaches, Roger Biles begins with the South in the 1920s, then goes to the shock of the Great Depression, and on to the interaction of the South and the New...

Government, Industry, and Rearmament in Russia, 1900-1914: The Last Argument of Tsarism.
December 22, 1995... Reviewed by Susan P. McCaffray Peter Gatrell had established himself as an authority on the economy of late imperial Russia through his several articles and his fine survey, The Tsarist Economy, 1850-1917 (St. Martin's, 1986) before the...

From Airships to Airbus: The History of Civil and Commercial Aviation, 2 vols.
December 22, 1995... Reviewed by Glenn E. Bugos "Ten percent of aviation is in the air, and ninety percent on the ground" (p. 291). W. David Lewis used this quote from aviation pioneer Clement Keys as the organizing theme of a 1992 international conference at the...

International Capital Markets and American Economic Growth, 1820-1914.
December 22, 1995... Reviewed by Larry Neal Davis and Cull have written a short book on a large topic, the role of foreign investment for the growth of the U. S. economy in the 19th century, which is a subject well worth re-examining at the end of the 20th...

Constructing a Competitive Order: The Hidden History of British Anti-Trust Policies.
December 22, 1995... Reviewed by Tony Freyer As the twentieth century closed, global market pressures impinged upon national economies, fostering reevaluation of regulatory policies. A contentious issue, world-wide, was the extent to which a nation's institutions...

World Trade since 1431: Geography, Technology, and Capitalism.
December 22, 1995... Reviewed by Ron Johnston Trade, according to neo-classical economic theory, results from a comparative advantage; each area within a trading system specializes in the production of those goods and/or services for which it has advantages over...

Regulation and Revolution in United States Farm Productivity.
December 22, 1995... Reviewed by Louis Ferleger For many scholars, government regulation is considered an impediment to the efficient allocation of resources. They argue that regulation usually leads to an industry performing poorly compared with other industries...

The Fountain of Privilege: Political Foundations of Markets in Old Regime France and England.
December 22, 1995... Reviewed by Kathleen Kete Hilton L. Root's subject is the difference between the "smooth" path to modernization taken by England in the eighteenth century and the appreciably rockier one charted by France at the time of the French Revolution....