The Past Speaks

Kirsten Greer will be presenting our co-authored paper at the World Congress of Environmental History on 10 July 2014  I’ve pasted some information about our panel, followed by our abstract, below.

10.07.2014 09:00-10:30 CO-04 (CFPG)
Insular Economies, Insular Ecologies: Putting Islands in Context in Environmental History
Organizer: Rebecca Woods (Columbia University, New York, United States)

Chair: Libby Robin (Australian National University, Canberra, Australia)

Introduction
Libby Robin (Australian National University, Canberra, Australia)
A185 Sugar Island of the North: Redpath Sugar and the Connected Environmental Histories of Montreal and the West Indies in the 19th Century Abstract
Kirsten Greer (Nipissing University, Nipissing, Canada)
A186 From Degenerates to Regeneration: Island Laboratories in Mexico Abstract
Emily Wanderer (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, United States)
A187 A Model for Ecology? Soay Sheep, St Kilda, and Ecosystem Ecology in the Twentieth Century Abstract Rebecca Woods (Columbia University, New York, United States)
Commentary
Libby Robin (Australian National University, Canberra, Australia)

Abstract:

The connection between metropolises such as London and Liverpool in the British Isles and resource-producing islands in the tropics is a major theme in the history of the British Empire. In the middle of the nineteenth century, a city in the British colony of Canada developed similar relationships with the tropics. The island of Montreal experienced rapid industrialization and became Canada’s largest city. Previously, Montreal had been a transit point for Canadian raw materials en route to consumers in Britain. Canada’s industrialization and rapidly evolving relationship with the West Indies allowed Montreal to join the rank of the Empire’s resource-importing cities. As research by Innis and other scholars has shown, Canadian nation-building during this time period relied on the creation of hinterlands for natural resource exploitation, linking intricately the environmental histories of metropolis and frontier, such as Montreal and the rural and northern peripheries that supplied it with timber, wheat, and minerals. Missing from this literature, however, is that Canada’s greatest metropolis created a hinterland that was outside of Canada, in the West Indies. This paper investigates the connected environmental histories of the island of Montreal with the sugar islands of the Caribbean by focusing on the Redpath Sugar Refinery and its reliance on raw sugar from the West Indies. It pays particular attention to the challenges of researching the environmental histories of sugar islands, especially when piecing together fragments of various archives, using private company records, and rewriting Canadian environmental history to include a transnational dimension that reinterprets Canada’s role in exploiting slave labour in the Spanish West Indies and nominally free labour in the British West Indies during a time of nation-building and expansion. As this paper demonstrates, the trade in sugar linked the metropolis of Montreal to the commodity frontier of the West Indies, which produced drastically different outcomes in both regions. From soil erosion to water pollution, the production of sugar also involved significant profits made from slave and cheap labour, which were therefore reinvested into urban civic improvement projects, all of which helped to position Montreal as an intellectual and scientific centre in North America.

I’m currently attending the Association of Business Historians conference here at Newcastle University Business School. There are many parallel sessions at this conference, so I’ve had to make some tough choices about which papers to hear. I’ve pasted my choice of panels below. 

FRIDAY, 27 JUNE

9.30 – 10.45        Registration and Tea/Coffee (Newcastle University Business School)

11.00 – 12.30      Keynote Address:  Roy Suddaby, University of Alberta

“Institutions and History: The Historic Turn in Management Theory”

12.30 – 13.30      Lunch

Session  1-B:      Industrial Policy and Government Intervention

Chair: Rory Miller

John Wilson (Newcastle University Business School) & Mark Billings, University of Exeter:

                “Ferranti and the NEB: the implications of government intervention”.

Niall Mackenzie & Andrew Perchard, University of Strathclyde: “Blinded by the light? The rhetoric of

                State-led innovation in the UK after 1945”.

Neil Rollings, University of Glasgow: “The Industrial Policy Group in the 1960s and early 1970s:

                mixing business with politics”.

15.00 – 15.15      Tea/Coffee

15.15 – 16.45      Parallel Session 2

Session  2-B:      Crisis Management in Banking

Chair: Ranald Michie

Victoria Barnes & Lucy Newton, University of Reading, “Crisis and accountability: bank management,

                directors and the governance of joint-stock banks, 1826-1844”.

Laurence Mussio, McMaster University, “Crisis leadership in North America’s dangerous decade:

                risk, return and reward at Bank of Montreal, 1860-1870”.

Matthias Kipping (Schulich Business School) & Gerarda  Westerhuis, Utrecht University: 

                “Antecedent of Crises: Turning Bankers into Managers”.

16.45 – 17.00      Tea/Coffee

17.00 – 18.00      Coleman Prize

18.00 – 19.00      Break

19.00 – 20.00      Drinks Reception at the Discovery Museum (supported by Taylor and Francis Publishing)

20.00 – 22.00      Conference Dinner (Discovery Museum)

SATURDAY, 28 JUNE

8.30 – 8.50 Registration and Tea/Coffee

9.00 – 10.30        Parallel Session 3

Session  3-E:       Bank-Industry Relationships in the 20^th Century

Chair: Lucy Newton

Andrew Smith, University of Liverpool: “Trading With the Enemy: HSBC’s Relationships with German

                Companies during the First World War”.

John Wilson (Newcastle University Business School), Gerhard Schnyder (Kings College, University of

                London) & Anna Tilba (Newcastle University Business School): “The Great Divide? Bank–

                industry relationships and corporate networks in Britain, 1904-2003”.

Julie Bower, University of Birmingham: “The formation of industrial conglomerates in the post-World

                War II era: the role of banking and finance”.

10.30 – 10.45      Tea/Coffee break

10.45 – 12.15      Parallel Session 4

Session   4-E       Innovation and Technological Change

Chair: Mitch Larson

Andrew Smith (University of Liverpool) and Bernardo Batiz-Lazo, University of Bangor: “Managing

                technological change in Hong Kong’s retail banking (1945-2005)”.

David Bowie, Oxford Brookes University: “Diffusion of services innovation in mid-to-late nineteenth

                century English hotels: the Continental and American plan”

12.15 – 13.00      Lunch

13.30 – 15.00      Parallel Session 5

Session  5-A       Accounting,  History  and Organisational Theory

Chair: Sam McKinstry

Christopher Napier (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University ), Gary Carnegie (Royal

                Holloway, University of London) & Lee Parker (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology

                University ): “Accounting History and Theorizing about Organizations”.

Alistair Mutch (Nottingham Trent University) & Alan McKinlay (Newcastle University Business

                School): “Accountable Creatures’: Scottish Presbyterianism, accountability and managerial

                capitalism”.

Rob Bryer, Warwick University: “Socialism, accounting, and the creation of ‘consensus capitalism’ in

                America, circa.1935-1955”.

15.00 – 15.15      Tea/Coffee break

15.15 – 16.45 Session 6 Round Table and Panel Discussion:

Rethinking Business History? Between Economic History and Organisational History

Convenors: Stephanie Decker & Michael Rowlinson

Panel: Alan McKinlay, Roy Suddaby, Alistair Mutch, Dan Wadhwani,  John Wilson.

There is a huge body of literature on the role of firms in basic and applied scientific research. That’s why I’m interested in Professor Ted Binema‘s new book on how the Hudson’s Bay Company supported scientific research during the period in which it enjoyed commercial monopoly in much of what is now Canada. Much like Bell Labs back in the glory days of AT&T, the HBC ploughed money into basic research.

Demonstrating whether a firm’s investments in basic science translates into higher profits for the company is very difficult to do, especially since knowledge has public-good properties. However, Binema’s case study may allow him to isolate the effects of this investment, as the HBC had a trading monopoly for a long period and thus could be expected to appropriate part of the social surplus resulting from their research expenditure.

Binema’s book will be of interest to anyone who liked Mokyr’s The Enlightened Economy.

Binema’s work also parallels some new research by  Mara P. Squicciarini and Nico Voigtländer. These authors examine the role of Enlightenment knowledge in French economic growth in the period just before the French industrial revolution. Their conclusion is that towns that were more engaged in the Enlightenment (as measured by the proportion of residents who subscribed to the Encyclopédie) grew faster in subsequent years.

To measure the historical presence of knowledge elites, we use city-level subscriptions to the famous Encyclopédie in mid-18th century France. We show that subscriber density is a strong predictor of city growth after 1750, but not before the onset of French industrialization. Alternative measures of development confirm this pattern: soldier height and industrial activity are strongly associated with subscriber density after, but not before, 1750. Literacy, on the other hand, does not predict growth. Finally, by joining data on British patents with a large French firm survey from 1837, we provide evidence for the mechanism: upper tail knowledge raised the productivity in innovative industrial technology.

 

 

Conference on Creative Cultures and Multiethnic Communities: Benefits and Challenges of Cultural Diversity

11-14 January 2015, Longyearbyen, Svalbard

The creativity of diverse communities.

Globalisation is about more than just faceless transfers of populations and capital on a massive scale: It also changes how local communities function. In much of the world, ethnic homogeneity is now the exception rather than the rule. Even towns and cities that have long possessed minority populations are growing increasingly diverse as new nationalities supplement established communities.

The challenges of cultural, religious, and racial diversity are prominent in the public discourse surrounding ethnic diversity. But can localities also harness multiculturalism for community benefit? Can ethnic diversity contribute to cultures of creativity and innovation, strengthening local business competitiveness and community cohesion? Can multicultural communities develop a sense of shared visionand values? How can policymakers and community leadersmake the most of multiculturalism’s creative potential?

Creative Cultures and Multiethnic Communities will explore these and other questions through a combination of academic and policy presentations and field trips into the community of Longyearbyen.

The multiethnic Arctic.

Located in the Svalbard archipelago, between Norway and the North Pole, the settlement of Longyearbyen is the northernmost town in the world. It is also a multiethnicexemplar: Longyearbyen has just 2400 inhabitants, nearly all immigrants, representing over 40 countries. Although Svalbard belongs to Norway, citizens from around the world are entitled to work and reside here.

Longyearbyen is diverse, but is it multicultural? Does this Norwegian-dominated community draw strength from or simply attempt to ignore its countless national minorities? Can a town in which most residents stay for just a few years truly create its own local culture?

Attendance at the conference is open to all interested individuals. If you wish to give a presentation at the conference, please see the call for papers. The deadline for abstracts is 30 June 2014. Registration is due by 30 September 2014.

Weathervane on the HBC’s former London headquarters

Yesterday, VoxEU posted a summary of some research on the role of headquarters in multinational firms. There is, of course, some truth the view that many company head offices are filled with administrative fat that doesn’t contribute anything to the bottom line of the company.  Cost-cutting CEOs often target layers of management in the head office rather than “productive” assets overseas. The reality, though, is that company head offices create a lot of value. They wouldn’t exist if they did. And their functionality is demonstrated by Masayuki Morikawa’s research, which found that:

Headquarters play important strategic roles in modern companies, but downsizing of headquarters is often advocated as a cost-cutting measure. This column presents evidence from Japanese firm-level data that the size of headquarters is positively associated with firms’ overall productivity. Moreover, the benefits of ICT are greater for companies with relatively large headquarters. Downsizing headquarters to cut costs may thus be harmful for long-term company performance.

This brings me to the Hudson’s Bay Company. As many readers of this blog will know, the HBC was founded in 1670 to trade for furs in Canada.  It is still in existence, although it has long since shifted from running trading posts to managing department stores in big cities. Until 1970, the headquarters of the HBC remained in London, even though virtually all of the productive assets of the firms were in Canada. Having your headquarters so far from your sites of production increases costs, which raises the question of why the HBC stuck with this business model for so long. In the 19th century, there were plenty of Free-Standing Companies with headquarters in London and productive assets overseas.  Mira Wilkins and others have published on this phenomenon. The Grand Trunk Railway Company of Canada is one example. But the HBC persisted with this model for much longer than the other firms. Why? How did paying for a head office in London help to create value?

I looked through my copy of E.E. Rich‘s classic history of the HBC yesterday. I was struck by how he says virtually nothing about the functions of the London headquarters on Fenchurch Street (later moved a few metres to Bishopsgate Street). There is nothing there about how many clerks worked there, what they did with letters arriving from Canada. Nothing. Nada. That’s a huge omission, in my view, although I will concede that Rich wrote the book just before Alfred Chandler’s research revealed to historians the sheer historical importance of company head offices.

What’s even weirder is that little research on this topic has been done since the 1960s.  The HBC has an excellent archive that is available to researchers. I strongly suspect that the papers created by the London headquarters had the highest survival rate of any type of HBC paper, so there must be suitable material for a study waiting there for someone. It’s astonishing that nobody has taken up the challenge of writing a study of how the headquarters operated. If there is such a study, I certainly don’t know about it.

There has been some great research recently about the history of this really important firm. This new research includes:

Binnema, Ted. Enlightened Zeal: The Hudson’s Bay Company and Scientific Networks, 1670-1870. University of Toronto Press, 2014.

Ogata, K., & Spraakman, G. (2013). The persistence of delegitimated structures: Insights from changes to management accounting at the Hudson’s Bay Company, 1670-2005. Journal of Accounting & Organizational Change, 9(3), 280-303.

Colpitts, George. “Intrinsic environments and metropolitan perceptions of nature in the nineteenth century: the case of the London–based Hudson’s Bay Company.”International Journal of Business and Globalisation 12, no. 2 (2014): 183-201.

Cavanagh, Edward. “A Company with Sovereignty and Subjects of Its Own? The Case of the Hudson’s Bay Company, 1670–1763.” Canadian journal of law and society 26, no. 01 (2011): 25-50.

I’m looking forward to reading all of these works. However, I really wish someone who do a good scholarly study of the functions of the HBC London office.  The new histories of the East India Company  by Roy and Lawson would doubtless be very useful to the author.

Roy, Tirthankar. The East India Company: The World’s Most Powerful Corporation. Penguin Books India, 2012.

Lawson, Philip. The East India Company: A History. Routledge, 2014.

Colpitts, G. (2014). Intrinsic environments and metropolitan perceptions of nature in the nineteenth century: the case of the London–based Hudson’s Bay Company.International Journal of Business and Globalisation, 12(2), 183-201. 

In the early nineteenth century, ideas of nature changed when European metropolitan capital developed new ways to report environment in the colonies. Accounting and reporting reforms, based on new economic sensibilities and changes to gift-giving practices, influenced centre-periphery ‘ways of knowing’. In its need for better management of its overseas operations, the London-based Hudson’s Bay Company reformed its accounting and journal reporting in the first decades of the nineteenth century and, in the process, changed how its British investors understood nature in North America. Based on a survey of changing accounting practices and the composition of ‘journals of daily occurrence’ sent from fur trade posts, this article expands understandings of how quantifiable and other ‘intrinsic’ (or measurable) views of nature became an important element of imperialism and metropolitan capitalism.