The sources formally documenting how tax policy evolves fail to capture many of the complexities inherent in such processes. Insights into such approaches would guide other tax administrations in navigating tax policy change in an international domain. This paper examines the historical background to the introduction of the Irish 12.5 percent corporate tax rate in 2003 in the face of the European Union’s (EU) dissatisfaction with the existing regime. A low corporate tax rate has long been seen as a critical element of the country’s industrial development strategy. Employing an oral history method to identify the perspectives and objectives of those involved in the policymaking process, we provide a case study of how one tax administration resolved what was seen as a particularly significant public policy dilemma.

This Comment derives from a group discussion, generously funded by the Transactions Workshop Grant in 2023, to reflect retrospectively on the nature and degree of interaction among six trailblazing women members of Pakistan’s constituent assembly of 1972–3 (‘women constitution-makers’) within and without the assembly against the backdrop of their life histories. I refer to this group discussion as a ‘collective reflection’ to describe its open-ended structure of snowballing conversations among a small cohort of oral history narrators on the women constitution-makers as well as archivists whose work engages with material on or related to Pakistan’s enduring Constitution of 1973. The objective of the collective reflection was twofold: to provide an interactive mnemonic context for storytelling on the women constitution-makers and their personal and political associations; and to explore the extent to which these six women acted in concert in their constitution-making role on the question of women’s political representation. In relation to the former, the collective reflection yielded valuable observations. With respect to the latter, however, it presented a mixed picture and struck a note of caution in reading strong inferences into documentary archives – in this case, the constituent assembly debates.

In this article, we present the findings of an oral history project on the past, present, and future of psychometrics, as obtained through structured interviews with twenty past Psychometric Society presidents. Perspectives on how psychometrics should be practiced vary strongly. Some presidents are psychology-oriented, whereas others have a more mathematical or statistical approach. The originally strong relationship between psychometrics and psychology has weakened, and contemporary psychometrics has become a diverse and multifaceted discipline. The presidents are confident psychometrics will continue to be relevant but believe psychometrics needs to become better at selling its strong points to relevant research areas. We recommend for psychometrics to cherish its plurality and make its goals and priorities explicit.

Within British-Italian history of the Second World War, there are several questions surrounding the sinking of the SS Arandora Star, on 2 July 1940, which still remain problematic. Nevertheless, this tragedy continues to play a prominent role in the heritage and memories of the Anglo-Italian communities in the UK. This article focuses on the experiences and memories of the Arandora Star from the perspective of members of the Italian community in the North-East of England. Oral histories of Italian civilian internees who were embarked onto the ocean liner were collected via qualitative interviews with descendants of victims and survivors. This article contributes to raising awareness of Arandora scholarship by articulating how memories were interpreted retrospectively and transmitted down generations. Informing the debate on the purpose of misremembering in oral history, this article sheds light on the events and their imaginary reconstruction.

Recent scholarship on Pakistani Shi‘ism draws on a historical archive that it primarily textual: books, journal articles, pamphlets, etc. authored by Shi‘i ‘ulama and notables. However, as the field of oral history rightly asserts, the textual archive can never capture those historical facts that are only accessible through oral sources. This article at times challenges and at other points supplements and reinforces the textual archive through the creation of a new archive: an oral history archive based on multiple interviews with two leading Shi‘i ‘ulama in contemporary Pakistan. At the heart of these interviews lies the question of how these ‘ulama conceptualize and remember their country’s political past and assess their present, considering their minority status and sectarianism. Through undertaking the above-mentioned examination, this article inaugurates the use of oral history as central to scholarship on Shi‘i ‘ulama and underscores the importance of the study of this overlooked primary source.

China's cattle trade before 1949 is effectively invisible to historians. With no geographic center, few dominant firms, and little government oversight, cattle trade left behind no clear archive of sources, leaving scholars to the mercy of conjecture and episodic evidence. Combining insights from business and social history, we focused our attention on trade intermediation as the key to understanding the operations of a diffuse trade system. In the absence of a top–down archive, we composited hundreds of local sources on intermediation in cattle trade and remotely interviewed 80 former brokers. These sources revealed large numbers of individuated trade routes, which we break into three types: persistent supply, specialized demand, and resource circulation. Each type of trade called for distinct forms of intermediation with relatively little overlap between specialized networks. This recreation of China's cattle trade reveals a sophisticated market for animal labor that calls into question the direct causal link between imperialist resource extraction and rural immiseration, and suggests the utility of applying tools and perspectives of social history to other sorts of decentered commercial systems.

Calabrian ‘illegitimacy’ in the (inter)national imaginary today is largely the result of the region's association with the ’ndrangheta. Using analysis of oral history interviews, this research examines how this ‘illegitimacy’ influences the self-perception of Calabrians. It argues that a spectrum of prejudice and its effects can be mapped out both metaphorically and geographically. This spectrum incorporates Italy's position in relation to northern Europe, the South's position within Italy, Calabria's position within the South and the position within Calabria of certain communities. A number of towns in the Locride are at the extreme end of this spectrum: Locri, San Luca, Africo and Platì. Analysis of the (mis)recognition of inhabitants of these communities, including by other Calabrians, demonstrates how the experience of shame may be layered. This paper also considers how interviewees appear to deny their social and cultural proximity with the ’ndrangheta and the role this plays in a self-perpetuating cycle involving stereotypes, ’ndrangheta growth and extreme socioeconomic conditions.

There is a great need for new practices to match evolving theories in decolonizing and democratizing the field of African history. This article is a report on a research practice undertaken in the Central Region of Ghana in which researchers worked with teachers to deliver a community-based history experience for high school teachers. The historians contributed lessons in methodology as well as an approach that valued the students as co-creators. Students selected their own research topics and produced original interpretations for their community. The evidence from this intervention suggests benefits for researchers, students, and community members. Although it required a great deal of preparation and learning on the part of the historians, this kind of practice may build community confidence in the researcher, foster valuable partnerships, produce more accurate information and interpretations, and nurture the development of future historians from local communities.

The Czech Republic often has been cited as an example of successful economic transformation. The available literature has primarily focused on changes in the macroeconomic environment, although the actions of economic agents at the microeconomic level have emerged as the crucial factor explaining this success. Based on 101 oral history interviews, this article offers the firsthand experiences, frustrations, challenges, and human dimensions of doing business at that time and shows that the road from socialism to the market economy was a bumpy one. Our approach fills major information voids, and thus offers a unique opportunity for business historians to avoid slipping into the incomplete view of the world presented by written literature and archives.