Joanne Bailey has posted a lengthy and very positive review of my colleague Andrew Popp’s book Entrepreneurial Families: Business, Marriage, and Life in the Early Nineteenth Century (Studies in Business History, Pickering and Chatto, London, 2012).

I think that the main lesson we can take away from the discussion that Popp’s book has generated is that we need additional research into the mental and social landscapes of historical entrepreneurs.

The Journal of Historical Research in Marketing, which this month is celebrating its 7th Anniversary, invites submissions from business and economic historians. As the only scholarly journal dedicated entirely to historical themes in marketing, it features world-class research on the history of distribution and retail formats, advertising, direct marketing and public relations, market research, branding and product development, exporting, marketing policy and regulation, and the history of marketing thought. Over the past years, it has devoted special issues to marketing history and histories in Canada, Ireland and Italy, the history of sports marketing, the evolution of retail formats, and the contribution of female marketing scholars and practitioners, amongst other themes.

JHRM’s impact factor continues to improve: average cites per article are 2.44, and the H-index is 10. This compares very favourably with highly ranked business history journals (Source: Harzing’s ‘Publish or Perish’ and Google Scholar Database, January 27, 2015).

Please join us on the journey that continues to explore the complex and exciting history of marketing. More information on the journal’s content, call for papers, and submission procedures can be found on the journal’s website.

Editorial team

Editor
Professor Brian Jones
Quinnipiac University, School of Business / SB-DNF, 275 Mount Carmel Avenue, Hamden Ct 06518-1949, USA
bjones1@quinnipiac.edu

Associate Editors
Stefan Schwarzkopf
Associate Professor in Business History, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark

Eric H Shaw
Professor, Florida Atlantic University, USA

Explorations and Insights
Mark Tadajewski
Professor of Marketing, Durham University, UK

Teaching and Learning
Stanley J Shapiro
Professor of Marketing, Simon Fraser University, Canada

Editorial Advisory Board

Andrew Alexander, University of Surrey, UK
Fred Beard, University of Oklahoma, USA
Russell W. Belk, York University, Canada
John Benson, University of Wolverhampton, UK
Hartmut Berghoff, German Historical Institute / Göttingen University, USA
Barry Boothman, University of New Brunswick, Canada
Blaine Branchik, Quinnipiac University, USA
Stephen Brown, University of Ulster, UK
Robert Crawford, University of Technology Sydney, Australia
Peggy Cunningham, Dalhousie University, Canada
Teresa da Silva Lopes, University of York, UK
Judy Foster Davis, Eastern Michigan University, USA
Tracey Deutsch, University of Minnesota, USA
O. C. Ferrell, University of Wyoming/Colorado State University, USA
Ronald Fullerton, Independent Scholar, Nigeria
Shelby D Hunt, Texas Tech University, USA
William Keep, The College of New Jersey, USA
Philip Kotler, J. L. Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, Evanston, USA
Pamela Laird, University of Colorado at Denver, USA
William Lazer, Florida Atlantic University, USA
Marilyn Liebrenz-Himes, George Washington University, USA
Jan Logemann, Institut für Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte, Germany
Pauline Maclaran, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK
Elizabeth Moore, University of Notre Dame, USA
Leighann Neilson, Carleton University, Canada
Ross Petty, Babson College, USA
Richard Pollay, University of British Columbia, Canada
Thomas Powers, University of Alabama at Birmingham, USA
Jacqueline Reid, Duke University, USA
Daniel Robinson, University of Western Ontario, Canada
Ronald Savitt, University of Vermont, USA
Jonathan Schroeder, Rochester Institute of Technology, USA
Jagdish N Sheth, Emory University, USA
Inger Stole, University of Illinois, USA
Göran Svensson, Oslo School of Management, Norway
Robert Tamilia, Retired, Canada
Laura Ugolini, University of Wolverhampton, UK
Kazuo Usui, Saitama University, Japan
William Wilkie, University of Notre Dame, USA
Ian F Wilkinson, The University of Sydney, Australia
Terrence Witkowski, California State University, USA
Ben Wooliscroft, University of Otago, New Zealand – See more at: http://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/products/journals/editorial_team.htm?id=jhrm#sthash.ed6HTVN3.dpuf

LSE Campus

Terry Gourvish, the long-standing director of the Business History Unit at the LSE, has announced that the unit is closing.  This is sad news, as the Unit has been an important centre for business historical research since its establishment in 1978. The Unit’s seminar series has served a very important role in the business history community. In part because of its location in central London, the seminar series had attracted large numbers of excellent speakers and very engaged attendees. It’s a great venue for feedback on papers that are about to be submitted. The BHU has long had strong ties with private industry and government, thanks again to its central London location (it’s just a few Tube stops from the City).

[The only bad thing about the BHU unit was that access to it was through a labyrinthine route that included the bridge seen in the picture above].

Although the news of the closure of the unit is sad, there may be an opportunity here for another university in central London. It seems to me that the Institute of Contemporary British History at King’s would be the ideal new home for the seminar series previously run by the BHU. King’s is just across the street from the BHU. The head of the Institute, Richard Roberts, is a business/financial historian. I think that a business history seminar series would complement the Institute’s thriving oral history programme. (A number of years ago I attended a fascinating oral history session in which finance professionals spoke about the Big Bang deregulation reforms of 1988).

The management school at Queen Mary, University of London, is also home to business historians. It could potentially take over the operation of the BHU seminar.

Anyway, these are just suggestions from a sympathetic outside observer up in Liverpool.

P.S. Here are some of Terry’s publications:

Gourvish, Terry (2006) What can business history tell us about business performance? Competition and Change, 10 (4). 375-392. ISSN 1024-5294

AS: I’m posting this CFP on behalf of a colleague.

Call for Papers – Hello Kitty and International Relations
(12th June 2015)

Institute of Advanced Study (IAS), University of Warwick

Shocking news was revealed about Hello Kitty on her 40th birthday in summer 2014: ‘Hello kitty is not a cat – she’s a British girl’ named Kitty White and lives with her sister and parents in suburban London. But this has hardly affected the global popularity of this character created by the Japanese company Sanrio in the 1970s.
Her fandom has a large following around the world. She can be seen in Tokyo, New York, or Rio de Janeiro. 25,000 fans flocked to her convention in Los Angeles last year. The world’s first Hello Kitty theme park opened in China.
Illuminating on the intersection of popular culture and international relations (IR), the Hello Kitty and International Relations workshop aims to explore deeper, more nuanced understandings of IR through an interdisciplinary dialogue on the Hello Kitty phenomenon. International relations is not defined here as a narrow subfield in politics, but an interconnecting constellation with cultural, social, economic, and linguistic implications. It is the production of ‘relations international’ (Christine Sylvester) that incorporates questions of gender, relations among ethnic/racial groups and bridges between local and regional communities.
In the spirit of the aesthetic turn in IR (Roland Bleiker), this workshop recognises Hello Kitty’s potential to invite us to challenge granted dogmas in everyday life, interrogate in new ways global issues that affect our life-worlds, and reinvigorate silenced or marginalised debates. Above all, despite her commodification, she is an artistic expression that reifies and epitomises hope in and for the everyday. As the Japanese-American conductor Kent Nagano claims, the main purpose of art is to plant the seed of hope, through impassioning our innermost feelings.

This ubiquity of Hello Kitty is a result of her ‘emptiness’, or what Roland Barthes calls ‘the empty sign’ that embodies ‘an empty point-of-affluence of all its occupations and its pleasure’. Christine Yano’s recent monograph on Hello Kitty concurs: Hello Kitty ‘inhabits the “thingness” of the “thing” in the physical properties of cuteness she brings to meaning making’. Hello Kitty is then a ‘liminal space’ to posit academic conjectures on the everyday and the international.
This workshop welcomes contributions from a variety of approaches that discover Hello Kitty’s relevance in the contemporary world, especially in consideration to the three following sub-themes:
Resurgence of the global (political) subjects
Performing IR in everyday life
Speaking in silence: reconstructing marginalised voices in IR

Keynote Roundtable Speakers: Dr Kyle Grayson (Geography, Politics and Sociology, Newcastle), Dr Jason Dittmer (Geography, UCL) and Dr Erzsébet Strausz (Politics and International Studies, Warwick)

Please send a word-processed abstract of no more than 200 words to Misato Matsuoka (m.matsuoka@warwick.ac.uk) before 25th February 2015, indicating also the subtheme to which your paper would make a contribution. There are plans to publish the workshop papers in an edited volume, and details will follow.

ESRC Seminar Series
Organizations and Society:
Historicising the theory and practice of organization analysis (Seminar 1)

Wednesday 18 March 2015
Aston Business School, Birmingham

Keynote: Professor Roy Suddaby, (University of Victoria & Newcastle Business School)
“The professionalization of the corporate archivist”
Guest Speakers
· Alistair McKinlay (Nottingham Business School)
· Maria Sienkiwicz (Barclays Bank, Group Archivist)
· Roundtable “The Theory & Practice of Archiving”, organized by Michael Anson (Business Archives Council and Bank of England) & Margaret Procter (Liverpool University Centre for Archive Studies)

Call for Papers

We invite contributions that reflect the general theme of the seminar, how the past is managed in organizations, and how the theory and practice of archiving reflects the organizational engagement with the past. Potential themes include, but are not limited to:
· Archives as organizational memory?
· Managing organizational pasts – assets and dark secrets
· Safeguarding organizational heritage – the Wedgwood Collection & beyond
· Heritage, brands & national identities
· The professionalization of archivists and history managers
· Digital humanities and the organization

If you would like to present a paper at the seminar, please submit a 500-word abstract to s.decker@aston.ac.uk by 31 January 2015. Decisions will be communicated by 16 February 2015.
Registration is free. Lunch & refreshments will be provided. You can register without presenting a paper. Please contact m.podsiadly@aston.ac.uk to register.

Travel & accommodation should be covered by the participants. On campus accommodation is available; please see http://www.conferenceaston.co.uk/ for further information. Aston University is located in the city centre of Birmingham, within ten minutes’ walk from Birmingham New Street Train Station, Birmingham Snow Hill Station, and Birmingham Moor Street Station.

About the ESRC seminar series

The seminar series aims create a platform for European research on organizational analysis, heritage and reflective societies. All events revolve around three interlinked themes: archiving and archival research as resources for organizational analysis, organizational remembering as an alternative theoretical approach, and emerging methodologies that challenge organizational histories. For this series we have invited leading international scholars and invite new research through regular calls for papers. During these one day events there will be sufficient time to discuss ongoing research with leading scholars and journal editors from different disciplines. Several special issues are planned in relation to the themes of the seminar series.

For further enquiries please contact the organising team: Professor Stephanie Decker (Aston Business School), Professor Michael Rowlinson (Queen Mary University London), Professor John Hassard (Manchester Business School).

Sir John A. Macdonald:

Son of Glasgow, Father of Canada

City Chambers, George Square, Glasgow,

Saturday 10 January 2015

1.00pm-6.00pm, followed by Civic Dinner

Keynote speaker: Professor Sir Tom Devine

The historical connections between Scotland and Canada have long been celebrated. This conference brings together a diversity of perspectives for an evaluation of the life and legacy of Sir John A. Macdonald who was born in January 1815 in Glasgow.

12.00-1.00pm – Lunch

1.00pm – Welcome

1.15pm-2.30pm – Professor Ged Martin on Macdonald, Glasgow and Canada (to be read by Professor Alan Hallsworth)

2.30-4.00pm – Panel 1 – Macdonald as Politician, Businessman and Statesman

Session chaired by Professor Faye Hammill, University of Strathclyde

Randy Boswell (Carleton University) – ‘Macdonald’s Mouthpiece’ – Glasgow-born David Creighton and The Empire newspaper

Andrew Smith (University of Liverpool Management School)* and Laurence B. Mussio (McMaster University) – Sir John A Macdonald, the Canadian Military-Commercial Complex and the Preservation of the Capitalist Peace in the Civil War era, 1861-1871

Ed Whitcomb (independent scholar) – Sir John A. Macdonald: Warts and All

4.00-4.30pm refreshments break

4.30-6.00pm – Panel 2 – Macdonald as Emigrant, Favourite Son and Contested Icon

Session chaired by Dr John Young, University of Strathclyde

Stephen Mullen (University of Glasgow) – Macdonald’s Glasgow

Rosie Spooner (University of Glasgow) – Great Grains and Monolithic Minerals: Building a Canadian Nation at Glasgow’s International Exhibitions

Dawn Westwater (Brock University, Ontario) – The Controversy of Commemoration: Sir John A. Macdonald and his Debated Legacy

6.30pm – Civic Reception and Dinner courtesy of The Lord Provost, Glasgow City Council – with after-dinner speech by Sir Tom Devine on ‘The Scottish factor in Canadian history’

This event is organised under the auspices of the British Association for Canadian Studies (BACS) and with the support of the Canadian High Commission and Glasgow City Council.

‘Macdonald, Glasgow and Canada’ – Ged Martin (to be read by Alan Hallsworth)

Abstract:

This talk examines Sir John A. Macdonald’s contribution to Canadian politics – particularly the Confederation, 1864-67 – as well as personal and professional controversies such as marriages, alcohol and the Pacific scandal of 1873. This paper will also examine the debates surrounding the birthplace of Macdonald in Glasgow and assess the case for the two areas assumed to be the spot. Further, Macdonald’s identity as a Scotsman, Canadian or Canadian-Scot will be scrutinised as well as his relationship with fellow Scots in Canada and his contested legacy.

Biographies:

Ged Martin studied at Cambridge, where he took First Class Honours in History in 1967, and completed his PhD in 1972. He was President of the Cambridge Union Society in 1968, and a Research Fellow of Magdalene College, 1970-72. He spent the next five years as a Research Fellow in History at the Australian National University in Canberra, and in 1977 was appointed to a lectureship at University College Cork. Director of the Centre of Canadian Studies at the University of Edinburgh from 1983, Ged Martin became a Reader in History in 1994, and in 1996 received the United Kingdom’s first permanent Chair in Canadian Studies. He also served from 1993 to 1997 as Deputy Director of the University’s International Social Sciences Institute. Since 2001 he has lived in Ireland. Ged Martin is an Emeritus Professor of the University of Edinburgh. He is also an honorary Adjunct Professor of History at the National University of Ireland Galway, and at the University of the Fraser Valley, British Columbia.

Professor emeritus Alan Hallsworth has a 40 year research record in both the service sector and the study of Canada. He graduated with a research Masters from Queen’s, Kingston, Ontario, in 1971 and has since lectured at Universities including Surrey and Manchester Business School. He has been external examiner to degree programmes at Stirling and Glasgow Caledonian Universities. He has also served as President, Secretary and Treasurer of the British Association for Canadian Studies and a nine-year term on the Board of the Foundation for Canadian Studies. He is a past holder of the Prix du Quebec. He has co-published on Canadian topics with colleagues in BC, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec in journals such as The British Journal of Canadian Studies and The London Journal of Canadian Studies. He has been a regular contributor to the annual EUROPA Yearbook on The USA and Canada.

‘Macdonald’s Mouthpiece’ – Glasgow-born David Creighton and The Empire newspaper’ – Randy Boswell (Carleton University)

Abstract:

Recent revelations regarding John A. Macdonald’s birthplace in Glasgow (see attached news article by this writer) have shone a spotlight on The Empire newspaper, a Toronto-based publication founded in 1887 by Macdonald and other top Conservatives in Canada miffed at the perceived Liberal bias of the city’s two other main newspapers, The Mail and The Globe. Notably, Macdonald entrusted the job of publishing this new, aggressively pro-Conservative organ to David Creighton, a fellow native Glaswegian who emigrated to Canada at age 12 in 1855. This presentation would explore the significance of the Scottish connection between Creighton and Macdonald, the nature of partisan journalism in Canada during the post-Confederation era and the specific influence of both Creighton and The Empire in Canadian politics — particularly during the hard-fought 1891 election that Macdonald won but which, in his own mind and in Creighton’s, came at the cost of his health. Macdonald died just a few months after the vote. An Empire “memorial album” published after Macdonald’s death in June 1891 is now one of the earliest and strongest pieces of evidence suggesting that the future Father of Confederation was born at Brunswick Place in downtown Glasgow, though this long-forgotten document was only recently injected into today’s birthplace debate. Creighton, who also ran the Owen Sound Times newspaper and served as an opposition Conservative member in the Ontario legislature from 1875 to 1890, was widely viewed in those roles — but especially in his position as publisher of The Empire — as Macdonald’s mouthpiece. He has never been the subject of any extensive scholarly examination.

Biography:

Randy Boswell is an Assistant Professor, School of Journalism and Communication, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ont., Canada and freelance journalist, Toronto-based Postmedia News

‘Sir John A. Macdonald, Canadian Business, and the Preservation of the Capitalist Peace in the North Atlantic Triangle in the Civil War Era, 1861-1871’ – Andrew Smith (University of Liverpool),* and Laurence B. Mussio (McMaster University)

Abstract:

This paper re-examines Macdonald’s place in the history of the North Atlantic triangle by drawing on the literature of the theory of the capitalist peace. The 1860s were a turning point in the relationships between Britain, the United States, and Canada. In the 1860s, the British Empire and the United States came to the brink of war. Canadians were especially concerned that the Anglo-American War of 1812-1815 might be repeated, this time with a deadlier generation of weapons. This article shows that Macdonald played an active and important role in relations between the United States and the British Empire during a tumultuous period surrounding the American Civil War. The paper relates Macdonald’s actions as a statesman to his private interests as a businessman. The paper therefore helps to re-discover a forgotten aspect of Macdonald’s career- his private business activities. The paper discussed Macdonald’s response to British plans for the remilitarization of the Canada-US border and the Great Lakes, the bodies of water shared by the two countries. The paper then examines Macdonald’s response to Edward Cardwell’s plan to withdraw most British troops from Canada.  This paper is based on a wide range of primary sources, including contemporary newspapers and pamphlets, parliamentary speeches, the correspondence of government officials, as well as documents in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. The Macdonald papers have, of course, been used.

Biography:

Andrew Smith is based in the Management School, University of Liverpool.

Laurence B. Mussio is based in Communication Studies and Multimedia, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ont. Canada.

‘Sir John A. Macdonald: Warts and All’ – Ed Whitcomb (Independent scholar)

Abstract:

Sir John A. is definitely one of the ten most important people in Canadian history, arguably the number one person, though his long career also produced many mistakes.  Canadian nationalists emphasize his achievements and ignore the mistakes – they make him a super-hero because a nation needs heroes and they agree with the goals he pursued.  But there is no need to ignore the negative, because, even with the warts, John A. is still one of the most important Canadians ever. This paper will cover the achievements AND the mistakes.  John A. is frequently described as THE Father of Confederation.  But Confederation consisted of two developments, the union of the colonies, for which he made the greatest contribution, and the adoption of federalism, which he opposed.  Macdonald never abandoned the attempt to make Canada a unitary state, a policy that reflected the fact that Scottish culture flourished in unitary Great Britain.  His greatest achievements included rounding out the Dominion to include BC, PEI, and the prairies, maintaining independence from the USA, making the new federal system work, and building a transcontinental economy.  The mistakes include two unnecessary rebellions, the execution of Louis Riel, putting the CPR over the wrong mountain pass, attempting to undermine responsible government in the provinces, needless fights with Ontario, and the unequal treatment of all provinces which produced unfairness, resentment, and the pattern of asymmetrical federalism that has bedevilled the country since 1867.  But warts and all, he remains Canada’s greatest Prime Minister.

Biography:

Ed Whitcomb holds a Ph.D. from University College London and has written histories of all of Canada’s provinces. He is currently writing a history of federal -provincial relations.

‘Macdonald’s Glasgow’ – Stephen Mullen (University of Glasgow)

Abstract:

This paper illuminates ‘Macdonald’s Glasgow’- a five year period from Sir John A. Macdonald’s birth in 1815 until the family emigrated to Quebec in 1820. A case study of the Macdonald family is placed in both a regional and international context: social and economic conditions in commercial Glasgow, migration from the Highlands to the city as well as emigration from the Clyde to the Canadas after the Napoleonic Wars ended in 1815. Finally, the Macdonald family journey across the Atlantic and the processes that facilitated such emigration is examined.

Biography:

Stephen Mullen is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Glasgow. He has published on Glasgow connections with the New World in the colonial period.

‘Great Grains and Monolithic Minerals: Building a Canadian Nation at Glasgow’s International Exhibitions’ – Rosie Spooner (University of Glasgow)

Abstract:

Described by historian Paul Greenhalgh as the “extraordinary cultural spawn of industry and empire”, International Exhibitions served as platforms for the display of objects, the movement of people, and the dissemination of ideas across the British Empire and beyond. In the late-nineteenth century these highly popular and dynamic events sprung up in cities all over the world. Despite being the so-called ‘Second City of the Empire’, Glasgow only hosted its first exhibition in 1888. Given the strength of the historic links between Scotland and Canada – represented by figures like Sir John A. Macdonald, as well as countless other Scots who worked, traveled and settled there – it was a priority to secure Canadian participation. As one of the exhibition’s organisers stressed to the government’s representative in Glasgow, “I venture to hope from the intimate relations, commercial and personal, subsisting between your colony and this part of the Empire, that…we may receive your hearty support and co-operation.” This paper considers the relationship between Scotland and Canada, looking at how it played out at the International Exhibitions Glasgow hosted in the late-Victorian period. Specifically, it examines how Canadian authorities used these exhibitions to construct and promote a burgeoning sense of unique national identity. Although Canada was the empire’s largest Dominion territory, in some senses it remained a young country, having only achieved federal unity in 1867. As such, this paper addresses some of the legacies of Confederation, adding to analyses of this decisive political moment by framing the unification of Canada as a complex and on-going cultural process.

Biography:

Originally from Toronto, Rosie Spooner is a Ph.D. candidate in Art History at the University of Glasgow. Examining the material culture of empire, her research focuses on the circulation of objects, people and ideas between Britain and Canada through the mechanisms of the International Exhibition, exploring how varied and complex colonial, national and imperial identities interacted at events staged between the 1880s and the 1930s. Her developing curatorial practice brings together historic and contemporary objects, artworks and exhibitionary models in an effort to re-frame these categories, issues which similarly underpin her academic research.

‘The Controversy of Commemoration: Sir John A. Macdonald and his Debated Legacy’

– Dawn Westwater (Brock University)

Abstract:

Controversy has recently grown in Canada surrounding the commemoration of the approaching bicentennial of the birth of the country’s first Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald. Debate about the commemoration centres on the argument that some of the political legacies which have come to characterize Macdonald as a historical figure, are not necessarily positive, and therefore should not be ignored in favour of his remembrance. The two main positions on this controversy highlight questions about how historical figures should be commemorated and whether individuals, like Macdonald, should be judged by modern standards of ‘politically correct’ or acceptable behaviours, or by the views and opinions that were current and acceptable in their own time. Questions have recently been asked in newspaper and magazine articles by various citizens about whether or not it is appropriate or fitting to be perpetuating the legacy of an arguably ‘racist’ individual. If Sir John A. Macdonald’s legacy in Canada remains one of the longest and most significant in the nation’s history, then why has controversy plagued the process of commemoration of his life? This paper will examine how modern politics and social standards are effecting popular attitudes toward the potential commemoration of the founding father of the nation of Canada and will question the division among citizens in pondering whether Canadians’ struggle to share a cohesive view of their collective history is in part based on a tendency to judge historical figures by modern standards.

Biography:

Dawn Westwater is a currently a Master of Arts (History) candidate at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada. She is studying mid-twentieth century Canadian social history with a research topic of gender and alcohol and the post-war shift toward the social acceptance of women consuming alcohol as an act of leisure.