This article deals with the interrelations between the economyand the government of the expanding Spanish empire in the era of overseas expansion during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Specifically, it attempts to show how the government reacted to the phenomenon of the growing empire. In a full treatment it would be necessary to show how the various Spanish territories of the Peninsula were unified by the process of the “reconquista” and by the marriage policy of the Catholic Icings; how during the sixteenth century Navarre and Portugal were joined; how the overseas expansion of Spanish power, beginning in the late Middle Ages, continued during the sixteenth century; and how Spain, as a consequence of Hapsburg marriage policy, built an important bridge of possessions from the Netherlands to Italy. Obviously, these questions cannot be dealt with in detail in one article, but they form the background for the following discussion.

The late nineteenth century is often described as an era of innovation in managerial practice, including accounting. However, despite rich case studies of individual firms, we have little quantitative knowledge of average practices. This paper uses errors and omissions in balance statements to estimate the prevalence of double-entry bookkeeping and depreciation at Massachusetts corporations between 1875–1895. In 1875, 62 percent of firms balanced their returns, but by 1895 this number exceeded 96 percent. The proportion considering depreciation increased from 18 to 24 percent over the period. Firms using these techniques survived longer on average.

Some historians of Kansas City claim, with an arresting simplicity, that the principal reason for that city's growth and prosperity is to be found in the enterprise of its citizens. And, although enterprise is by no means a self-explanatory notion, it seems a compellingly obvious way to account for the circumstances of the city's formative years. Much of that history can be written around a series of crises of decision, urgent moments when poor judgment, or the faulty execution of policy, might have plunged the city into obscurity or downright decadence. Yet such was the city's good fortune, we are told, that at precisely these times brilliant leadership seems always to have been forthcoming, and enterprising men—usually businessmen—can be discerned standing in the storm center pointing the way to safety and success.

The Program Committee prepared for the thirty-first Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association in a somewhat unorthodox way. In recent years it has been the custom first to choose a central theme for the conference, and then to solicit only those papers which amplify the theme. This year the program committee decided to forego the attempt to produce a unified set of essays. Instead we wrote to approximately 250 members of the Association and other scholars in the United States and abroad, inviting suggestions for papers without preconditions as to topic, time period, or methodology. Over 150 papers were proposed, from which the committee chose 15. All but one of these are published here. Herbert Gutman's, “Marriage Licenses and Registers Among Freed Men and Women, 1865–1866: New Light on the Family and Household Conditions of Slaves and Free Blacks,” will be published at a later date.

In the southern Russian coal and steel region between 1874 and 1900, labor policy was outlined by the Russian managers of predominantly foreign firms through the Association of Southern Coal and Steel Producers. This policy was shaped by chronic labor shortage, by the strained relations between industry and local government, and by managers' sensitivity to their position as spokesmen for foreign interests. The posture southern managers developed was that of welfare capitalism. Considerable expenditure on wages and welfare, however, did not establish labor peace.