Welcome to Volume 24, No. 4 of Enterprise and Society. There is a slight deviation from tradition for this issue this year. As is well-known, the final issue of the year typically carries both the Presidential Address, delivered at the annual meeting in the spring, as well as summaries by all Krooss Prize finalists. Those of you able to attend the annual meeting in Detroit in March 2023 will have been spellbound by Dan Wadhwani’s Presidential Address, which wove together strands of his rich historical entrepreneurship scholarship with threads of his own fascinating family story. Converting such a personal address, combined with the continuous uncovering of materials, has involved intricate ongoing work. Dan and I have agreed to hold his address back to give him the opportunity to write the piece he really wants to write. Personally, I cannot wait to read it.
However, we are glad to publish here this year’s Krooss Prize summaries. They are, in alphabetical order, “Sick Time: Medicine, Management, and Slavery in Louisiana and Cuba, 1763-1868” by Liana DeMarco, “‘Speculators and Profiteers:’ The Entrepreneurial Transformation of Socialist China” by Adam Frost (in a piece entitled here “History from the Dustbins”), and “Building Blocs: Raw Materials and the Global Economy in the Age of Disequilibrium,” by Rob Konkel. The 2023 Krooss Prize was awarded to Adam Frost. Congratulations to Adam and both of the other shortlisted candidates.
Alongside the Krooss Prize summaries we are proud to present a very full suite of regular research articles. Again, these articles showcase the breadth of depth of business history research today: from human resource formation in Africa (Nthenya and Donzé) to credit in nineteenth-century Sino-American trade (Maggard); from “Space Age” stock markets (Lotfi) to entrepreneurialism in Swedish schools (Rudberg), with many other stops in-between. I am sure all our readers will find something of interest here.
Finally, I want to express my heartfelt thanks to a number of people. There are, of course, our Associate Editors—Shane Hamilton, Ai Hisano, Andrea Lluch, and Sharon Murphy—, Reviews Editor Alex Beasley, as well as the full Editorial Board. I want to once more thank outgoing Associate Editor Per Hansen, as well as all outgoing members of the wider Editorial Board. As always, I am deeply in debt to Carol Lockman of the Hagley Library for editorial assistance, to Adam Albright, also of the Hagley Library, for his ever wonderful cover designs, and to Roger Horowitz and Vicki Howard as BHC Treasurer and Secretary respectively for their continuing support. I also wish to acknowledge the work of the Print Media Oversight Committee, which has this year comprised Victoria Barnes, Xavier Duran (current Chair), and Marc Levinson. I remain deeply appreciative of the colleagues we work with at Cambridge University Press, from whom we and our authors receive such wonderful support. I want to acknowledge the often hidden but invaluable and inestimable contribution made by our long-term copy editor Lila Stromer. Finally, last but far from least, our thanks to our authors, for submitting such stimulating work, to our readers, for their continuing appetite for the best new work, and to our reviewers for their unstinting labor. This Introduction closes by listing the names of those who have served as reviewers over the last twelve months.
Finally, as we wrap up Volume 24 of Enterprise and Society there comes a realization that next year marks the journal’s twenty-fifth anniversary: a quarter century of remarkable achievement. We are not planning any great celebrations, being focused on the ongoing work, but do look forward to publishing a series of short essays reflecting on our origins and the trajectory that has brought us to where we are today.
Neveen Abdelrehim
Stephen Adams
Elin Åström Rudberg
Matthew Bailey
Ralf Banken
Victoria Barnes
Nicholas Barreyre
Quentin Belot Couloumies
Akram Benjamin
Gavin Benke
Robert Bennett
Maxine Berg
Carolyn Biltoft
Veronica Binda
Kevin Birth
Richard Blakemore
Marten Boon
Blake Brown
Marcelo Bucheli
Emily Buchnea
Joyce Burnette
Andrew Busch
Catherine Casson
Upal Chakrabarti
Sally Clarke
Andrea Colli
Duncan Connors
Eli Cook
Ella Coon
Chris Corker
Abe De Jong
Paolo Di Martino
Alexa Dietrich
Colin Divall
Amy Edwards
Pierre Eichenberger
Susanna Fellman
Maria Fernandez-Moya
Juan Flores
David Foord
Neil Forbes
James Foreman-Peck
Nicola Fosdike
Rika Fujioka
Leigh Gardner
Boris Gehlen
Audrey Gerrard
Ewan Gibbs
Thibaud Giddey
Martin Giraudeau
Semih Gokatalay
Erik Green
Bahar Gürsel
David C. Hammack
John Handel
Bradley Hansen
Gregory Hargreaves
Richard Harris
Abigail Harrison Moore
Ellen Hartigan-O’Connor
Pierre-Cyrille Hautcoeur
David Higgins
Richard Hirsh
Ai Hisano
Johs Hjellbrekke
Julian Hoppit
Peter Hudson
Jane Humphries
Owen Hyman
Ryo Izawa
Lisa Jacobson
Sonia Jaimes-Penaloza
Geoffrey Jones
Sophie Jones
Heather Joshi
Pantelis Kammas
Monica Kenely
Youn Ki
Arun Kumar
Joe Lane
Jonathan Levy
Donald MacKenzie
Niall MacKenzie
Mairi Maclean
Emily Masghati
David Mason
Saara Matala
Louise Miskell
Cyrus Mody
Duncan Money
Simon Mowatt
Craig Muldrew
Mary-Elizabeth Murphy
Lucy Newton
Rowen Olegario
Mary O’Sullivan
Jan Ottoson
Laura Panza
Diana Paton
Tawny Paul
Lawrence Peskin
Niels Petersson
Jason Petrulis
David Pinzur
Leon Prieto
Alfred Reckendrees
Alberto Rinaldi
Ethan Ris
Milagros Rodriquez
Janick Schaufelbuehl
Peter Scott
Jerome Sgard
Rui Shi
Reuben Silverman
John Singleton
Andrew Smith
Kenneth Snowden
Knut Sogner
Anna Soulsby
Joshua Specht
Christian Stutz
Lakshmi Subramanian
Timothy Taylor
Ulf Thoene
Pål Thonstad Sandvik
Nancy Tomes
Steve Toms
Geoffrey Traugh
Hannah Tucker
Chinmay Tumbe
Michelangelo Vasta
Chris Viebig
Simon Ville
Natalya Vinokurova
Benjamin Waterhouse
Jane Whittle
Hollian Wint
Nicholas Wong
Claire Wright