The Past Speaks

I am cordially inviting you to attend the meeting of the Business Historians’ group at the forthcoming CHA in Montreal. The meeting will take place on Sunday, 30 May between 12:30 and 14:00 in room H-423.

I understand that you may not regard yourself as primarily a historian of business. In the last fifteen years or so, the sub-discipline of business history has evolved to become far more inclusive by expanding into topics that overlap with what is commonly called social history. In recent years, the papers presented at the Business History Conference in the U.S.  have dealt with such historical issues as race and business, women in corporate America,  corporate social responsibility and the environment, gender in commercial advertising, and other matters far removed from traditional business history. The integration of social and business history in the last fifteen years has helped to make business history more relevant to other historians, which is one of the reasons why the number of papers related to business history (broadly defined) presented at the annual conference of the American Historical Association has increased of late.

The Canadian Historical Association has long had a sub-group devoted to business history. However, it has not been terribly active in recent years. I am the new chair of the business history group, having assumed my duties earlier this year. One of my goals is to bring about a renaissance in Canadian business history similar to that experienced by the business history community in the United States. I feel that by embracing other branches of history, Canadian business history will be able to increase its relevance to the discipline as a whole.

Historians who are not business historians in the strict sense of the term might be interested in attending the meeting of the business historians’ group. At the meeting, we shall be discussing how to re-invigorate this group. I am thinking that we should begin the process of organizing a roundtable on the future of Canadian business history for next year’s CHA.

As well, I would invite you to join the new Canadian Business History group on Google Groups.

http://groups.google.com/group/cbh-hac?pli=1

Best regards,

Andrew Smith