Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T03:34:35.856Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Business History and Economic History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Harold F. Williamson
Affiliation:
Northwestern University

Extract

As Fritz Redlich has had occasion to point out, business history is neither of American nor of recent vintage–that interest in company histories which began on the Continent early in the nineteenth century had by 1900 prompted at least one prominent German scholar to suggest how a study of business might be developed into an academic discipline. What was new in the United States was the term “business history,” and what is more relevant for my comments in this paper were the circumstances that led to its emergence as a special field and the effect that this separation has had on the relationship between business history and economic history.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1966

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Approaches to Business History,” Business History Review, XXXVI, No 1 Spring 1962), 6162.Google Scholar

2 Ibid., p. 62.

3 Hidy, Ralph and Hidy, Muriel, “Henrietta Larson: An Appreciation,” Business History Review, XXXVI, No. 1 (Spring 1962), 7.Google Scholar

4 Heaton, Herbert, “The Early History of the Economic History Association,” Tasks of Economic History (supplement to Journal of Economic History; 12. 1941), p. 108.Google Scholar

5 Cole, Arthur H., “A Report on Research in Economic History,” The Journal of Economic History, IV, No. 1 (05 1944), 58.Google Scholar

6 “The Corporation and the Historian,” Tasks of Economic History (supplement to Journal of Economic History; 12. 1944), p. 29.Google Scholar

7 Ibid., p. 38.

8 Ibid., p. 43.

9 “The Economics in a Business History,” Tasks of Economic History (supplement to Journal of Economic History; 12. 1945), pp. 5465.Google Scholar

10 Arthur H. Cole, “Business History and Economic History,” ibid., p. 46.

11 Tasks of Economic History (Supplement VI to Journal of Economic History; Dec. 1946), pp. 1-15.

12 Hutchins, John G. B., “Business History, Entrepreneurial History, and Business Administration,” The Journal of Economic History, XVIII, No. 4 (12. 1958), 453–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 In an article on Recent Contributions to Business History: The United States” (The Journal of Economic History, Vol. XIX, No. 1 [03. 1959])Google Scholar , Hutchins stated, “A general reading of these studies leaves the impression that from them many flashes of insight can be obtained but few generalizations drawn. As a group they are verbose, lacking in significant framework and especially without foundation for the appraisal of the management with which they are dealing.” He ended his survey with the observation, “Business history as of now has no discipline of its own, but in time it may acquire one.”.

14 Economic History and the New Business History,” The Journal of Economic History, XVIII, No. 4 (12. 1958), 467–80.Google Scholar

16 Hughes, J. R. T., “Fact and Theory in Economic History,” Explorations in Entrepreneurial History, n.s. III, No. 2 (Winter 1966), 8182.Google Scholar

17 See Cole, Arthur H., Business Enterprise in its Social Setting (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959).Google Scholar