It has been widely held that the traveling salesman was a product of the railroad era. In the following paper, Professor Taylor shows that, at least in France, the commis voyageur played a role as early as the second half of the eighteenth century. These findings, important as they are for the history of marketing, pose new questions: Was France ahead of other countries in developing this form of sales organization? If France really led, did the other countries follow suit under French influence? Is it perhaps telling, for instance, that in Germany until late in the nineteenth century the Reisende was still called by its French name?

This article examines the strategies employed by multinational banks to mitigate political risk following the onset of revolution in their host countries during the early twentieth century. It does so by exploring the activities of multinational banks in China during the Revolution of 1911 and its aftermath. This article first describes the measures that multinational banks took to maintain China's credit on foreign bond markets after the outbreak of revolution. It then examines how these bankers curtailed political instability by first withdrawing financial support from both the Qing government and the revolutionaries and then providing financial assistance to the new Chinese Republican government.

Since 2008, academics and policymakers have frequently debated why bond rating agencies such as Moody's, S&P, and Fitch enjoy considerable power and influence. The 2008 financial crisis focused our attention on the bond rating agencies that had previously categorized mortgage-backed securities as investment grade. Scholars have attributed the power enjoyed by the rating agencies to regulations that confer a privileged status on those agencies that are designated as nationally recognized statistical rating organizations (NRSROs) by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). While these authors mention in passing that the relevant regulation went into effect in 1975, none has conducted archival research to examine why this regulation was introduced at that time. This article is the first historical investigation of the creation of this crucial regulation, which entrenched the concept of the NRSRO in federal securities law. It shows that the SEC mandated the use of NRSRO-created ratings even though SEC officials vigorously debated whether it was wise for the commission to endorse ratings produced by agencies that operate on the basis of the controversial issuer-pay model. This article contributes to our understanding of the SEC's role in the development of the distinctive features of American capitalism.

Professor Blomquist describes and analyzes various forms of business association in an important northern Italian city during the period of economic growth in the thirteenth century. These included two basic forms of partnerships, as well as an early version of limited liability association.

The interaction of business and political goals and strategies is emphasized in this critique of a key state bank's role in national affairs of the 1830's.

This article answers, in part, questions raised by new rural and agricultural historians concerning how farmers interacted with the rise of large-scale organizational society in the era after the 1896 Presidential election. It argues that California citrus growers reacted by bringing the revolution of corporate capitalism to Southern California, 1893–1920. The article tests the activities of California orange growers against the theoretical models of Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. and Martin J. Sklar. It concludes that a pro-corporate group of orange growers embraced corporate managerial capitalism at a time when most other American farmers were in open revolt against industrialization. In 1912, these growers appointed G. Harold Powell, pomologist with the USDA's Bureau of Plant Industry, as General manager of their mammoth California Fruit Growers Exchange. By 1920, Powell and the Exchange board of directors completed the corporate consolidation of the citrus enterprise, and by example the reconstruction of California's potent agricultural empire.

Women substantially increased their presence in Washington, D.C.'s federal civil service during World War II. Accordingly, agency administrators struggled to define and address the “needs” of these new government women. This article analyzes the crucial role that gender played in the renegotiation of management strategies and policies during the 1940s. It examines the popularization of the human relations school of management in federal agencies and reveals how gendered concepts of authority impacted the employment prospects of female civil servants. The war provided an opportunity for some managers to promote a more “feminine” interpretation of human relations, but as this article demonstrates, that interpretation rested upon stressing the difference between male and female workers. In addition, postwar conservatism allowed for a reassertion of more hierarchical, “masculine” approaches to employment management in the civil service.

The interplay between national economic policy and private business policy in Latin America is a constant historical theme. The case of foreign-owned railroads in Argentina illustrates the road to nationalization between 1854 and 1948.

We examine the early marketing and distribution of entertainment radio sets. Manufacturers used distribution networks to both maximize profits and create barriers to entry. Lacking the market power of auto manufacturers, they developed cooperative strategies with authorized distributors and dealers. Dealers often complained about the costly activities manufacturers required of them. However, these underpinned the dominant quality and branding competition model of the 1920s, while the Depression-era switch to a simpler radio format, sold on price, proved catastrophic for the specialist retailer.

Two British land companies, the Canada Company and the British American Land Company (BALC), were active during the nineteenth century in settling what are now Ontario and the Eastern Townships of Quebec. Both purchased large tracts of land from the British government, with two goals: to provide funds for the governors of Canada and to relieve Britain of its surplus population. The Canada Company worked closely with the government to meet these objectives, whereas BALC indulged in land speculation and made immigration a secondary priority. One was successful, and the other struggled throughout its existence. Their success or failure was the directresult of how well they dealt with both the changing economic climate and the British and Canadian political situation.

The following article reexamines the role of business leaders in the structural reform of American city government during the Progressive Era. In presenting a careful analysis of the fate of redevelopment plans after Baltimore's great 1904 fire, this case study argues against an unsophisticated good guy/bad guy approach to urban and business history. Historians are urged, however, not to abandon attempts to make reasoned moral judgments concerning the consequences of structural reform, but rather to base those efforts on a recognition of the deepening complexity of twentieth-century urban society.

An Atlantic approach to the history of early American trade challenges traditional British opinions and, indeed, much Anglo-American scholarship regarding the commercial prospects of the new United States. Contemporary Spanish observations, in contrast to the more familiar and widely cited ones in English, correctly predicted the post-Revolutionary War integration of American and Spanish imperial markets. As political, diplomatic, and economic upheavals broke down the old mercantilist system, U.S. merchants quickly succeeded in exploiting their comparative advantage in the expanding Atlantic economy. The debate over the “decline” of the British West Indies is amplified by examining the concurrent “rise” of the Spanish West Indies, particularly Cuba, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

In the nineteenth century, the Liverpool Cotton Brokers' Association (CBA) coordinated the dramatic growth of Liverpool's raw cotton market. This article shows how the CBA achieved this through the development of a private-order institutional framework that improved information flows, introduced standardization and contracting regimes, and regulated market exchange platforms. These developments corresponded with significantly improved market coordination, which facilitated the growth of the largest raw cotton market in the world. The article's findings demonstrate and quantify the importance of nonstate actors in creating institutions of global exchange central to the first wave of globalization.

The globalization of financial markets over the past decade has focused the spotlight on the responsiveness of financial firms to international pressures. Insurance markets have traditionally relied on global networks not only to expand the insurers' sphere of influence but also to support domestic business. Until relatively recently, Australian insurance companies have not played a significant role in the development of international markets. However, in the last decade of the twentieth century Australian insurers ventured overseas on a scale without precedence. This article presents an historical perspective on the internationalization of the Australian life-insurance market with a view to understanding why these firms have been classified “late starters” in the internationalization stakes. In a broader capacity it provides insights into the impediments to overseas expansion and the forces encouraging or discouraging the development of cross border networks.

For many years Americans engaged in business abroad at their own risk, unaided in any important way by the backing of their government. When confronted with the forces of national self-interest, they faced frustration. Then the policy of the United States, aware of its economic responsibilities and opportunities and dangers, swung to their support. The new diplomacy was not always adept, but it produced remarkable changes. These are exemplified in the thirty-year history of American efforts to gain an entry to the oilfields of the Netherlands East Indies. The files of the Department of State provide an intimate and unique view both of motivations and the mechanisms of change.

Many opportunities for fruitful research emerge from this survey of those holdings of the National Archives which are pertinent to the historical study of government-business relationships in the United States.

In the second of two articles, Professors Aduddell and Cain take the story of the application of antitrust law to the large meatpackers from the 1920 consent decree to Judge Julius Hoffman's 1956 decision not to lift the decree. Despite fundamental changes in the technology and structure of the food distribution industry, and strong indications that the packers' proposed plan to sell at retail was no longer good business, Hoffman refused to remove the obstacle to forward integration. The decision, in the authors' opinion, does not bear scrutiny on economic grounds. The episode supports two important generalizations about antitrust prosecution as a tool for economic planning: that constant change in a dynamic society often renders antitrust decisions meaningless; and that regulation frequently deprives society of rational structural change.

Professor Wheeler describes and analyzes the extreme violence that marked labor-management relations in the West Virginia coal fields.