Introduction

With this issue, we bring the fourteenth year of Enterprise and Society’s publication to a close, and with that, the seventh year of my editorial efforts. My second term will end officially in December 2014, but the transition process to Andrew Popp’s succession as Editor-in-Chief has already begun. This fall Andrew and I spent several days working through the computer-based procedures central to manuscript intake and refereeing, and we will commence jointly handling new submissions early in the New Year. Early next summer, we will organize individual issues together and by fall, editorial tasks will effectively be transferred to the United Kingdom. The journal’s operational responsibilities will remain with Carol Lockman, our indispensable Managing Editor at the Hagley Museum and Library in the United States.

As is customary, our December issue opens with the Business History Conference’s (BHC’s) Presidential Address, this year delivered by Professor Kenneth Lipartito of Florida International University. His essay is followed by summaries of the three dissertation candidates for the BHC’s Krooss Prize, authored, respectively, by Gavin Benke, Bartow Elmore, and Caitlin Rosenthal. Dr. Rosenthal’s Harvard thesis, “From Memory to Mastery: Accounting for Control in America, 1740–1880,” received the 2013 prize. She has joined the History Department at the University of California, Berkeley.

The main body of this issue features four articles, two on imperial-era China by Hsien-chun Wang of Taiwan’s National Tsing Hua University and by Madeleine Zelin from Columbia University in New York. Two early twentieth-century studies complete the quartet: Jose Galindo’s review of an immigrant French family’s Mexican business interests and Tobias Karlsson’s analysis of the Swedish tobacco monopoly and its downsizing strategies in the 1920s. This issue is a rare one, as all four articles focus on business history before 1950, blunting a bit what I’ve elsewhere described as “the rush to the recent.”

Last, we once again close a volume-year by expressing our deepest thanks to the over one hundred colleagues who served the journal and the discipline by refereeing submissions in the twelve months from October 2012 through September 2013. Without their dedicated efforts and their insightful commentaries, Enterprise and Society would crumble. They are:

• Stephen Adams

• John Alic

• Adoracion Alvaro-Moya

• Franco Amatori

• Glen Asner

• Gerben Bakker

• Ralf Banken

• Bernardo Batiz-Lazo

• Eldon Bernstein

• Marco Bertilorenzo

• Mark Billings

• Marcus Box

• William Childs

• Howard Cox

• Domingo Cuellar

• Stephanie Decker

• Jennifer Delton

• William Deringer

• Tracey Deutsch

• Paul Duguid

• Clive Edwards

• Ernie Englander

• Harald Espeli

• Chris Evans

• Giovanni Favero

• Jeff Fear

• Kenneth Fones-Wolf

• Lou Galambos

• Aurora Galvarriato

• Wendy Gamber

• Tiffany Gill

• Eric Godelier

• Chris Grocott

• Nicolas Hatzfeld

• Lars Heide

• Thomas Heinrich

• David Higgins

• Louis Hyman

• Lisa Jacobson

• Richard John

• Colin Johnson

• Mark P. Jones

• Christopher Kobrak

• Christian Koot

• Cynthia Krom

• Chi Kong Lai

• Pamela Laird

• Naomi Lamoreaux

• Margaret Levenstein

• Marc Levinson

• Einar Lie

• Terri Lonier

• Teresa da Silva Lopes

• Qing Lu

• Nuno Madureira

• Rachel Maines

• Nikki Mandell

• Daniel Margolies

• Stephen Mihm

• Thomas Misa

• Bethany Moreton

• Simon Mollan

• Maria Mota

• Ken Moure

• Sharon Murphy

• Javier Vidal Olivares

• Declan O’Reilly

• Serge Paquier

• robin Pearson

• Evert Peeters

• Daniel Pope

• Andrew Popp

• Nuria Puig

• Balkrishna Rao

• Alfred Reckendrees

• Giorgio Riello

• Alberto Rinaldi

• Jarod Roll

• Mark Rose

• Joan Ramon Roses

• Audrey Russek

• Peter Scholliers

• Philip Slaby

• John K. Smith, Jr.

• Michael Smitka

• Edie Sparks

• Leigh Sparks

• Susan Spellman

• Peter Stabel

• Alessandro Stanziani

• Ray Stokes

• Richard Sylla

• John Tang

• Chris Taylor

• Damian Tobin

• Edward Todd

• PierAngelo Toninelli

• Ermano Tortia

• Janice Traflet

• Adrian Tschoegel

• Hugo Van Driel

• Francesc Valls

• Ezekiel Walker

• Evelyn Welch

• Andrew Wild

• Mira Wilkins

• Charlie Witham

• Ben Wubs

• Alexia Yates

• Jeff Yost

• Larry Zacharias