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January/February 2008 Historically Speaking 43 dated?3 How did Andrew Mellon's methods of "portfolio management" compare to, or perhaps even shape, later and more formal strategies by American or global conglomerates? How, if at all, did the Mellon family's approach to replicating a diversified financial dynasty diverge from the strategies of European clans like the Haniels or the Rothschilds? How did its understandings of commercial morality depart from those of Baring Brothers ? More broadly, how distinctive does the crony capitalism of either Carnegie or Mellon look when juxtaposed to the socially embedded commercial worlds of early 19th-century New England industrialists , early 20th-century Chinese manufacturers, or far-flung 20th-century Indian merchants?' Alternatively , in what ways did their efforts to build and mobilize "social capital" vary from the strategies of later American strivers, who had to cope widi the political mazes of corporate bureaucracies and professional organizations, as well as a much more contentious environment concerning the bases of social identity?5 It's a good bet that historians of American capitalism will continue to revisit the evolution of industrialism between die Civil War and die New Deal. This era of explosive economic growth and profound institutional transformation—occurring before the wholesale rejection of self-dealing as a legitimate mode of commercial operation, the widespread acceptance of transparency as an ideal of corporate governance, and the related consolidation of the modern regulatory state—is simply too pivotal for scholars to ignore. The next challenge will be, perhaps even in the context of entrepreneurial biography, to peer beyond both the geographic confines of the United States and the temporal limits of the age of heavy industry—both, intriguingly, interpretive inclinations of Alfred Chandler during the last years of his life.4 Through the kind of comparisons and juxtapositions sketched above, I suspect, historians of industrializing American business will find their next batch of organizing questions, their next constructive conduits for making sense out of the economic institutions diat Andrew Carnegie and Andrew Mellon did so much to fashion. Edward Balleisen is associateprofessor of history at Duke University. He is the author ^Navigating Failure: Bankruptcy and Commercial Society in Antebellum America (University of North Carolina Press, 2001). ' Richard R.John, "Elaborations, Revisions, Dissents: Alfred W. Chandler,Jr.'s Visible Handafter Twenty Years," Business History Review!! (1997): 151-200. = Quoted in Charles P. Kindleberger, Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises (Basic Books, 1989), 154. ' HaroldJames, Family Capitalism: Wendeis, Hantel, Falcks, andthe ContinentalEuropean Model (Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 2006). 4 Naomi Lamoreaux, InsiderLending: Banks, Personal Connections, and Economic Development in IndustrialNew England (Cambridge University Press, 1996); Sherman Cochran, Encountering Chinese Networks: Western, Japanese, and Chinese Corporations in China, 18801937 (University of California Press, 2000); Claude Markovits, The Global World of Indian Merchants, 1750-1947: Traders of Sind from Bukhara to Panama (Cambridge University Press, 2000). * See in particular Pamela Laird, Pull: Networking andSuccess since Franklin (Harvard University Press, 2006). 6 Alfred D. Chandler and Bruce Mazlish, eds., Leviathans: Multinational Corporations and the New GlobalHistory (Cambridge University Press, 2005). Rome and Jerusalem* Martin Goodman Roman forces destroyedtheJewishTemplein Jerusalem in 70 CE., and over the ensuing centuries no Roman emperor allowed it to be rebuilt. Why? By the 1st century CE. the whole Mediterranean world lay under Roman rule, but the veneerof political,cultural,andeconomicunityoverlay considerable variety across the Roman world. There is much evidence that many peoples under Roman rule, such as Greeks and Egyptians, were allowed to live much as they had for generations. Why, then, wereJews treated so differendy? Life in Rome certainly differed from Ufe in Jerusalem. Romewas ahuge,crowdedmetropolisbuilt on the proceeds of imperial conquest;Jerusalem had grown great entirely as a center of religious pilgrimage , the tourists—attracted three times a year to the Temple at the great festivals—swelling into millions the (quite small) resident population. Much in Rome reflected the military origins of the city's prestige; in Jerusalem the Temple, rebuilt in magnificent style by Herod the Great using the latest Roman techniques, dominated the lives of all die inhabitants. Jews were shocked by Roman casual acceptance of nudity and * An earlier version of this piece was published in...

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