Business History Review articles from June 1997

Business History Review archives from June 1997

Elaborations, revisions, dissents: Alfred D. Chandler, Jr.'s The Visible Hand after twenty years.
June 22, 1997... The Visible Hand has, of course, been influential in many fields outside of American history. Chandler has always aspired to reach a cross-disciplinary audience and, to an extent that may well be unprecedented among historians of the United...

The decline of declinism. (economic condition of UK)
June 22, 1997... The "de-industrialization" of Britain since the 1970s and the emergence of a negative balance of payments in manufacturing in the early 1980s have provided a receptive context for accounts of failure in British business and the British...

The reception of scientific management by British engineers, 1890-1914.
June 22, 1997... Introduction According to Urwick and Brech in The Making of Scientific Management (1957), when Frederick Taylor visited Birmingham in 1910 to attend a joint meeting of American and British engineers, "he met in British minds a soil so...

Competence or omniscience? Assessing entrepreneurship in the Victorian and Edwardian British paper industry.
June 22, 1997... One of the most important debates in modern British economic history has revolved around the degree of responsibility the nation's entrepreneurs must take for their country's relative economic decline since the 1870s.(1) Located at the core of...

The British engineering press during the second industrial revolution: responses to corporate capitalism.
June 22, 1997... Great Britain's loss of dominance of world markets has inspired analyses from several generations of historians, but even now important aspects of the story remain unexplored. In spite of all that has been said about the motives of late Victorian...

Global perspectives on modern business.
June 22, 1997... The dominant paradigm in business history has for many years been the synthesis developed by Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. Like most paradigms that define a field of scholarship, Chandler's has attracted swarms of devotees and critics, and for some...

Global perspectives and British paradoxes. (business failures in UK)
June 22, 1997... For Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., in Scale and Scope, "the British story provides a counterpoint, an antitheses, to the American experience."(1) Chandler shows that fewer of the largest firms appeared in Britain. British companies preferred to retain...

The development of modern business in Japan.
June 22, 1997... Although it has not been recognized very clearly, Alfred Chandler offers a dual definition of modern business. One definition focuses on the formation of "managerial hierarchies;" this refers to the rise of professional managers, a development...

Reflections on global business and modern Italian enterprise by a stubborn 'Chandlerian.'
June 22, 1997... It is perfectly correct to place the work of Alfred Chandler at the center of a discussion of globalization as seen by business historians. No other author in our field of studies has offered us so much both in terms of research results as well...

The People's Welfare: Law and Regulation in Nineteenth-Century America.
June 22, 1997... By William J. Novack. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1995. x + 396 pp. Notes, bibliography, and index. Cloth, $55.00, ISBN 0-8078-2292-2; paper, $19.95, ISBN 0-8078-4611-2. Reviewed by Herbert Hovenkamp In this well...

The Man Who Found the Money: John Stewart Kennedy and the Financing of Western Railroads.
June 22, 1997... By Saul Engelbourg and Leonard Bushkoff. East Lansing: Michigan University Press, 1996. xiv + 257 pp. Notes, bibliography, index and maps. $34.95. ISBN 0-87013-414-0. Reviewed by Maury Klein Bankers are, by the very nature of what they do,...

Form Follows Finance: Skyscrapers and Skylines in New York and Chicago.
June 22, 1997... By Carol Willis New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1995. 217 pp. Notes, illustrations, bibliography, and index. Cloth, $35.00, ISBN 1-56898-070-6; paper, $24.95, ISBN 1-56898-044-2. Reviewed by Thomas J. Misa The history of the...

Hazards of the Job: From Industrial Disease to Environmental Health Science.
June 22, 1997... By Christopher C. Sellers Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1997. 331 pp. Figures, illustrations, notes, and index. $45.00. ISBN 0-8078-2314-7. Reviewed by Christian Warren In 1909, physician and Hull House resident Alice...

The Northern Gold Fleet: Twentieth-Century Gold Dredging in Alaska.
June 22, 1997... By Clark C. Spence Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1996. 328 pp. Photographs, notes, bibliography, and index. $44.95. ISBN 0-2520-2218-1. Reviewed by Liston E. Leyendecker Clark C. Spence, America's leading mining historian, has done...

The Life of Herbert Hoover: Master of Emergencies, 1917-1918.
June 22, 1997... By George H. Nash New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1996. xiii + 656 pp. Photographs, bibliography, notes, and index. $45.00. ISBN 0-393-03841-6. Reviewed by Brian H. Balogh I don't suggest that you read The Life of Herbert Hoover: Master of...

Technology as Freedom: The New Deal and the Electrical Modernization of the American Home.
June 22, 1997... By Ronald C. Tobey Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. 334 pp. Photographs, illustrations, tables, bibliography and index. $35.00. ISBN 0-52020421-2. Reviewed by Howard P. Segal Technology as Freedom is a significant defense of...

The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History.
June 22, 1997... By David Hackett Fischer. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. xii + 536 pp. Figures, bibliographical references and index. $30.00. ISBN 0-1950-5377-X. Reviewed by Wyatt Wells In this ambitious book, David Hackett Fischer argues that...

The Business Community of Seventeenth-Century England.
June 22, 1997... By Richard Grassby New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. xxx + 615 pp. Tables, bibliography, and index. $74.95. ISBN 0-5214-3450-5. Reviewed by Henry Horwitz When Richard Grassby shook the dust of Oxford from his shoes to barter in New...

History of Pedlars in Europe.
June 22, 1997... By Laurence Fontaine (translated by Vicki Whittaker) Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1996. 280 pp. Tables, figures, notes, and index. Cloth, $49.95, ISBN 0-82231786-9; paper, $17.95, ISBN 0-8223-1794-X. Reviewed by Walter Friedman "Men...

Coffee and Power: Revolution and the Rise of Democracy in Central America.
June 22, 1997... By Jeffery M. Paige Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1997. xvii + 436 pp. Figures, notes, and index. $45.00. ISBN 0-674-13648-9. Reviewed by Timothy J. Henderson There are two key threads in Jeffery Paige's new book. One is a...

Divided Sun: MITI and the Breakdown of Japanese High-Tech Industrial Policy, 1975-1993.
June 22, 1997... By Scott Callon Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1995. xv + 240 pp. Tables, figures, notes, bibliography, and index. $29.50. ISBN 0-8047-2505-5. Reviewed by Jeffrey R. Bernstein The expansive subtitle of Divided Sun is a bit...

Japanese Banking: A History, 1859-1959.
June 22, 1997... By Norio Tamaki New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. 311 pp. Maps, appendices, notes, bibliography, and index. $54.95. ISBN 0-521-49676-4. Reviewed by W. Miles Fletcher III Norio Tamaki's Japanese Banking: A History, 1859-1959...