Business history

Business history is the branch of economic history that deals with the history of business organizations, methods, government regulation, labor relations, and impact on society. It also includes biographies of individual companies and entrepreneurs.

Historiography

Business history was founded by Professor N. S. B. Gras, at the Harvard University Graduate School of Business Administration, starting in 1927. He defined the field's subject matter and approach, wrote the first general treatise in the field, and helped Harvard build a tradition of scholarship as well as the leading library in the field. itioners, and to give it status in the academic world. He edited a series of monographs, the Harvard Studies in Business History. He also served as editor of the Bulletin of the Business Historical Society (1926- 1953), a journal which later became the Business History Review (1954-date).

Some of the leading scholars include:

• Alfred D. Chandler

Bibliography

Textbooks and surveys: USA

• Mansel G. Blackford. A History of Small Business in America (Twayne's Evolution of Modern Business Series) (ISBN: 0805798242) 1992)
• Mansel G. Blackford and K. Austin Kerr. Business Enterprise in American History (ISBN: 0395351553) (1990)
• Keith L. Bryant. A History of American Business (1983) (ISBN: 0133892476)
• John Chamberlain. Enterprising Americans: A Business History of the United States (ISBN: 0060107022) (1974) by popular journalist
• Thomas Childs Cochran. Business in American Life: A History (1976) (ISBN: 0070115257)
• Arthur H. Cole. The American Wool Manufacture 2 vol Harvard UP 1926
• Thomas V. Dibacco. Made in the U.S.A.: The History of American Business (1988) (ISBN: 0060914661)
• Alex Groner. The American heritage history of American business & industry, (ISBN: 0070011567) (1972), very well illustrated
• Herman Edward Krooss. American Business History (ISBN: 0130240834) (1972)
• McCraw, Thomas K. American Business, 1920-2000: How It Worked.2000. 270 pp. ISBN: 0-88295-985-9.
• Glenn Porter. The rise of big business, 1860-1910 (1973)(ISBN: 0690703945)
• Schweikart, Larry. The Entrepreneurial Adventure: A History of Business in the United States (2000)
• Juliet E. K. Walker; Encyclopedia of African American Business History Greenwood Press, 1999 online edition
• Williamson, Harold F. and Arnold R. Daum. The American Petroleum Industry: The Age of Illumination, 1859-1899, 1959: vol 2, American Petroleum Industry: the Age of Energy 1899-1959, 1964. The standard history of the oil industry.

Textbooks and surveys: World

• Mansel G Blackford. The Rise of Modern Business in Great Britain, the United States, and Japan (1998)
• Chandler, Alfred D., Jr. Shaping the Industrial Century: The Remarkable Story of the Evolution of the Modern Chemical and Pharmaceutical Industries. (Harvard Studies in Business History, no. 46.) 2005.
• Chandler, Alfred D., Jr. Scale and Scope: The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism (2004)
• Stanley Chapman. Merchant Enterprise In Britain (2003)
• Edwin S. Hunt and James M. Murray. A History of Business in Medieval Europe, 1200-1550 1999
• Geoffrey Jones. The Evolution of International Business: An Introduction (1995)
• Geoffrey Jones. Merchants to Multinationals: British Trading Companies in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (2000)
• Maurice W. Kirby. Business Enterprise in Modern Britain: From the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Century (1994)
• Henry Cornelius Klassen. Business History of Alberta 1999
• Mokyr, Joel. ed. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History 4 vol (2003)
• John F. Wilson. British Business History, 1720-1994 (1995)

Historiography

• Franco Amatori and Geoffrey Jones, eds. Business History Around the World (2003)
• Louis Galambos; American Business History. Service Center for Teachers of History. 1967, historiographical pamphlet. online version
• Gras, N.S.B. and Henrietta M. Larson. Casebook in American Business History (1939), with short biographies, company histories and outlines of the main issues
• Charles Harvey. Business History: concepts and measurement (1989)
• Charles Harvey and John Turner. Labour and Business in Modern Britain 1989
• Lance Klass and Susan Kinnell. Corporate America: A Historical Bibliography 1984
• McCarthy, Dennis M. International Business History: A Contextual and Case Approach (1994)
• Andrea Lee McElderry, Jane Kate Leonard, and Robert Gardella. Chinese Business History: Interpretive Trends and Priorities for the Future (1998)
• Barry Emmanuel Supple. Essays in British Business History 1977
• Kenneth Arthur Tucker. Business History: Selected Readings 1977

External Links

• H-Business: daily H-Net Discussion Network 2006. online
• Business History Review is online at JSTOR.COM and has published for 80+ years
• the journal Enterprise & Society: The International Journal of Business History seeks original, imaginative research on the historical relations between businesses and their larger political, cultural, institutional, social, and economic contexts.