Business History Review articles from September 1985

Business History Review archives from September 1985

The rise of market culture: the textile trade and French society, 1750-1900.
September 22, 1985... The Rise of Market Culture: The Textile Trade and French Society, 1750-1900. William Reddy's superb The Rise of Market Culture is both an extended interrogation of the market as a means of understanding human behavior and an innovative study...

Europe, America, and the wider world: essays on the economic history of western capitalism. Volume I: Europe and the world economy.
September 22, 1985... Europe, America, and the Wider World: Essays on the Economic History of Western Capitalism. Volume 1: Europe and the World Economy. William Parker is a leading--perhaps one should say the leading--American economic historian. He is deeply...

A history of American business.
September 22, 1985... A History of American Business. Textbooks require separate standards. Rather than original research, a provocative thesis, or novel methods, textbooks ought to demonstrate breadth, comprehensiveness, an up-to-date reading of the secondary...

Drastic measures: a history of wage and price controls in the United States.
September 22, 1985... Drastic Measures: A History of Wage and Price Controls in the United States. Hugh Rockoff has done his homework. Although he begins with a very brief survey of older episodes of price control dating all the way back to colonial times...

Material culture of the wooden age.
September 22, 1985... Material Culture of the Wooden Age. This book of essays is a sequel to an earlier collection of papers, America's Wooden Age: Aspects of Its Early Technology, also edited by Brooke Hindle and published by Sleepy Hollow Press. Growing out of...

Samuel Slater and the origins of the American textile industry, 1790-1860.
September 22, 1985... Samuel Slater and the Origins of the American Textile Industry, 1790-1860. The last few years have seen the rise of a Samuel Slater industry. At least three books on Slater's textile mills have been or are about to be published, and several...

Proprietary capitalism: the textile manufacture at Philadelphia, 1800-1885.
September 22, 1985... Proprietary Capitalism: The Textile Manufacture at Philadelphia, 1800-1885. This is a book with noticeable weaknesses and important strengths. It is often hampered by cumbersome organization, overly detailed discussions, and an inclination...

Styling vs. safety: the American automobile industry and the development of automotive safety, 1900-1966.
September 22, 1985... Styling vs. Safety: The American Automobile Industry and the Development of Automotive Safety, 1900-1966. Joel Eastman has brought together an interesting set of materials in his book about the history of automotive safety. His major thesis...

The American automobile industry.
September 22, 1985... The American Automobile Industry John B. Rae is the dean of historians of the American automobile industry. His pioneering study, American Automobile Manufacturers: The First Forty Years (1959), was the first modern history of the industry,...

Controlling the atom: the beginnings of nuclear regulation, 1946-1962.
September 22, 1985... Controlling the Atom: The Beginnings of Nuclear Regulation, 1946-1962. Reviewed by Richard F. Hirsh Peaceful nuclear power promised to fulfill the hopes of impractical dreamers and normally stoic business leaders. Dreamers expected...

Forces of production: a social history of industrial automation.
September 22, 1985... Forces of Production: A Social History of Industrial Automation. Reviewed by Daniel Nelson David F. Noble offers two books for the price of one. The first is an exhaustive (and exhausting) history of the origins of numerical control...

Dictionary of business biography: a biographical dictionary of business leaders active in Britain in the period 1860-1980. Volume 1: A-C.
September 22, 1985... Dictionary of Business Biography: A Biographical Dictionary of Business Leaders Active in Britain in the Period 1860-1980. This is the first of a projected five-volume series of collected biographies of "successful" or "prominent" British...

England's sea empire, 1550-1642.
September 22, 1985... England's Sea Empire, 1550-1642. England's Sea Empire is a narrative and descriptive history of England's emergence as a sea power over the century before the Civil Wars. The subsequent two hundred years--during which England supplanted the...

The management of monopoly: a study of the East India Company's conduct of its tea trade, 1784-1833.
September 22, 1985... The Management of Monopoly: A Study of the East India Company's Conduct of Its Tea Trade, 1784-1833. From 1784 to 1833 the East India Company had a legal monopoly on the importation of tea in Great Britain. How the company conducted the...

The patent system and inventive activity during the industrial revolution, 1750-1852.
September 22, 1985... The Patent System and Inventive Activity during the Industrial Revolution, 1750-1852. This book, as its title suggests, is a historical narrative of the British patent system and its effects on the flow of inventions from 1750 to 1852. The...

Sweated industries and sweated labor: the London clothing trades, 1867-1914.
September 22, 1985... Sweated Industries and Sweated Labor: The London Clothing Trades, 1867-1914. Sweated Industries and Sweated Labor is organized around the interesting observation that the historical evolution of the London clothing trades in particular (as...

The wounded soldiers of industry: industrial compensation policy, 1833-1897.
September 22, 1985... The Wounded Soldiers of Industry: Industrial Compensation Policy, 1833-1897. This book provides a scholarly account of the development of employers' liability for accidents in Britain from the early common law cases of the 1830s to the...

The rise and fall of the political press in Britain. Volume 2: the twentieth century.
September 22, 1985... The Rise and Fall of the Political Press in Britain. The untimely death of Stephen Koss deprived us of a lively and prolific young scholar. Highly esteemed on both sides of the Atlantic, Koss's work touched a variety of central issues in...

Undermining capitalism: state ownership and the dialectic of control in the British coal industry.
September 22, 1985... Undermining Capitalism: State Ownership and the Dialectic of Control in the British Coal Industry In addition to its half-punning, half-serious title, this book as a whole generates mixed feelings. The author is a political scientist, not a...

Foreign finance in continental Europe and the USA 1815-1870: quantities, origins, functions and distribution.
September 22, 1985... Foreign Finance in Continental Europe and the USA 1815-1870: Quantities, Origins, Functions and Distribution. D. C. M. Platt has written a small but important book on the sources of finance employed by the "developing" countries in the...

International banking in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
September 22, 1985... International Banking in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. The present work, a translation of Karl Erich Born's Geld und Banken im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, is a most welcome addition to the literature in English on the history of...

Peasants, landlords and merchant capitalists: Europe and the world economy, 1500-1800.
September 22, 1985... Peasants, Landlords, and Merchant Capitalists: Europe and the World Economy, 1500-1800. This short survey, translated from the German, interprets from a Marxist perspective the economic history of early modern Europe. The theme, in the...

Between dependency and autonomy: India's experience with the international computer industry.
September 22, 1985... Between Dependency and Autonomy: India's Experience with the International Computer Industry. This is a beautifully written account of an important case study of the transfer of technology between multinational enterprises (MNEs) and...

Russian factory women: workplace and society, 1880-1914.
September 22, 1985... Russian Factory Women: Workplace and Society, 1880-1914. The old Russian proverb, "a chicken is not a bird and a woman is not a person," sums up the position of women in Russian society at the turn of the century. In Russian Factory Women,...