Business history is at once very old and very young. Objectively, it is as old as town economy in the ancient and medieval periods. By this, I mean that business began in the town, ancient and medieval. Subjectively, it is hardly more than a decade old. That is, as a subject for study, business history is just getting under way. Since this is the case, we may fittingly stop to consider what we are to understand by the subject.

Business history is the study of the development of business administration. Roughly, it deals with the historical background of subjects taught in schools of business.

Perhaps we may divide the subject, that is, the history of business administration, into two main parts. The first is the history of policy-formulation. We may think that there is little policy in business and has been less in the past. The fault lies in us: there is a long story and an interesting one at this point. Much of the development in policy, conscious or unconscious, is embedded in these five stages—petty capitalism, mercantile capitalism, industrial capitalism, financial capitalism, and national capitalism. Woven into these are many ingredients, but the degree of specialization and control is uppermost in the change of patterns. We shall come back to this subject later.