Introduction

This Enterprise & Society issue leads off with a special Forum, in which Daniel Raff of the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, offers a provocative discussion of business history research methods, “How to Do Things With Time,” followed by four commentaries and an author’s rejoinder. Professor Raff shared an earlier version of this work with me several years ago, and I then suggested that it might well form the basis for an afternoon’s symposium, sponsored by the Hagley Museum and Library’s Center for the History of Business, Technology and Society. With valuable assistance from Hagley’s Roger Horowitz and Carol Lockman, the Symposium took place in May 2012. The commentators that day were Andrew Popp (University of Liverpool), Steven Usselman (Georgia Tech), and Christine Rosen (Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley). The quality of the comments and the vigorous discussions that ensued led me to organize this Forum, to which Sidney Winter (emeritus, University of Pennsylvania) has graciously contributed as well. As is customary, the author is afforded space at the close to reply to the questions and issues our commentators have raised. I hope this set of essays proves stimulating and productive reading.

The issue’s articles continue our journal’s customary eclectic, unplanned diversity. Sabine Go’s analysis of creating and managing commercial insurance in sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Amsterdam is succeeded by Matthew Mitchell’s study of the Royal African Company’s struggle to create profitable alternatives to the eighteenth century slave trade. A pair of rather more modern, though quite distinct essays fill out the research section: a comparative analysis of European bankruptcy practices in the late nineteenth/early twentieth centuries by Pierre-Cyrille Hautecoeur and Paolo DiMartino, and a close analysis of French capital investment in Franco’s Spanish economy by Esther Sánchez and Rafael Castro. A hefty cluster of book reviews follows, completing the issue.

Thanks to effective searches by the Business History Conference’s Print Media Oversight Committee, Enterprise & Society has announced two significant editorial changes. Already in place as our new book review editor is Richard Weiner (Indiana University-Purdue University, Fort Wayne), succeeding Marcelo Bucheli (University of Illinois). We thank Marcelo for his energetic and ambitious management of book review operations these past four years and welcome Richard to the journal with pleasure. Second, the Print Media Oversight Committee has recommended Andrew Popp, Professor of Business History at the University of Liverpool Management School, as the next E&S Editor-in-Chief, commencing January 2015. The Business History Conference Board of Trustees confirmed this nomination speedily and with enthusiasm, and I look forward to working with Andrew over the coming years as the transition commences. I hope he finds, as I have, that the intellectual stimulation generated from reading scores of submissions offsets the at-times mind-numbing attention to detail that editorial work entails. Without question, Enterprise & Society will be well- and thoughtfully led during his tenure.