This final issue of the year brings to a close my first twelve months at the helm of Enterprise & Society. It has been a demanding but fascinating time: I have learnt much; been impressed and humbled by the intelligence, commitment, and sheer hard work of both our authors and our reviewers, and have come to truly appreciate the support I have received from colleagues, not least Carol Lockman, Roger Horowitz, and Philip Scranton – as well as our new colleagues at Cambridge University Press. And I have had fun. I hope you, our readers, have enjoyed a highly diverse, thought-provoking, and wide-ranging set of articles, articles that challenge us all to think again about what business history can be and what it can teach us.
As is tradition, our December issue carries the Business History Conference presidential address by Professor Mary Yeager, of the University of California, Los Angeles. Professor Yeager takes us on a highly personal journey, but along the way we learn some vital lessons about the roles women have played in both business and business history. As she says, “WOMEN. CHANGE. EVERYTHING.” As is also usual, we carry summaries of the dissertations shortlisted for the Kroos Prize, authored by Alejandro Gomez-del-Moral, Johan Mathew, and David Roth Singerman. Once again, these emerging scholars are setting the benchmarks for what business history might be and pointing out the directions in which it might go.
I am also pleased to publish four original research articles in this issue. Joaquim Rius-Ulldemolins takes us to late twentieth-century Spain for a vexed story of nation building and corporate branding. With Jonathan E. Robins we voyage around the globe to examine attempts to build organizations of co-operation in the international cotton trade of the early twentieth-century. Anne Verplanck takes us back to nineteenth-century Philadelphia for an exploration of the foundation of a pioneering family-Daguerreotypy business. Finally, we land in Australia, where Monica Keneley explores the creation of a market for life insurance in the century from 1850. I like to think that together these articles exemplify the inquisitive, open-minded policy Enterprise & Society sets for itself and hope that you enjoy them.
I have already alluded to the support I have gratefully received from a number of colleagues. As readers will know, we switched publishers from Oxford University Press to Cambridge University Press. I want to thank everyone at Cambridge for the exemplary support we have received from them over the last year. Finally, the last thank you must go to our referees. Our work would simply be impossible without their diligence, application, and insight. A list of those assisting Enterprise & Society between September 2014 and August 2015 follows immediately.
Malcolm Abbott
Neveen Abdelrehim
Stephen Adams
Michael Aldous
Scott Anthony
Joseph Arena
Klara Arnberg
Bruce Baker
Gerben Bakker
Bernardo Batiz-Lazo
Stefano Battiliossi
Marco Bertilorenzi
Fahad Bishara
Barbara Black
Richard Blundel
Linzy Brekke-Aloise
Christopher Breward
Oskar Broberg
William Bryan
Emily Buchnea
Louis Cain
Leonardo Caruana de las Cagigas
Catherine Casson
Christy Chapin
Peter Coclanis
Asli Colpan
James Cortada
Robert Crawford
Andrew Creed
Roberto Davini
Stephanie Decker
Christof Dejung
Paula De la Cruz-Fernández
Pierre Desrochers
Bob Doherty
Gregory Domber
Laura Ekholm
Bartow Elmore
Martin Eriksson
Kjetil Fallan
Hannah Farber
Ferdinando Fasce
Brian Fauteux
Giovanni Favero
Renato Giannetti
Margaret Graham
Andrew Godley
Darren Grem
Christopher Grocott
Barbara Hahn
Kristin Hall
Shane Hamilton
Leslie Hannah
David Hanlon
Charles Harvey
Colin Haslam
Michael Heller
David Higgins
Sean Holmes
Jane Humphries
Richard John
Abe de Jong
John Kalenga
Chis Kobrak
Yavuz Koese
Martin Kragh
Koji Kubo
Claire Lemercier
Qing Lu
Christina Lubinski
Robert MacDougal
Mairi Maclean
Josephine Maltby
Gerald Markowitz
Cathy Matson
Chris McKenna
Helen Mercer
Ranald Michie
Peter Miskell
Simon Mollan
Mads Mordhorst
Marina Moskowitz
Sharon Murphy
John Murray
Laurence Mussio
Alistair Mutch
Andrew Nash
Lucy Newton
Tom Nicholas
Anders Ogren
Jari Ojala
Rowena Olegario
José María Ortiz-Villajos
Tore Olsson
Mary O’Sullivan
Julia Ott
Alastair Owens
Robin Pearson
Veronique Pouillard
Stephen Procter
Malcolm Purinton
John Quail
Paolo Quattrone
Dan Raff
Carter Ringle
Laura Rischbieter
Mark Rose
Timo Särkkä
Thomas Schatz
Stefan Schwarzkopf
Philip Scranton
John Sedgwick
Luciano Segreto
Martin Shanahan
Elizabeth Shermer
Ellen Silbergeld
Peter Sims
Philip Slaby
Knut Sogner
Andrew Smith
Howard Stanger
Alessandro Stanziani
Amrith Sunil
Richard Sylla
Kara Swanson
James Taylor
Kevin Tennent
David Thomson
Steve Toms
Steven Topik
Janice Traflet
Gail Triner
Sean Turnell
John Turner
Heidi Tworek
Behlul Usdiken
Steven Usselman
Michelangelo Vasta
Stephanie Vincent
Lee Vinsel
R. Daniel Wadhwani
Jonathan Wild
Christopher Wilk
Nick Witham
Robert Wright
Ben Wubs
Alexia Yates
Andreas Zangger