In this paper, which examines the business operations of the Anzin Mining Company during the Restoration, the record of a single firm has been used to assess recent interpretations of the nature of French entrepreneurship in the nineteenth century. These interpretations portray French industry in its formative period developing around “small units, small volume, and small horizons.” “Cautious management, obsolescent plants, and high profits” have been cited as main features which came to characterize the business operations of even the largest firms. It has been pointed out also that maximization of profits was not a fundamental aim of the French entrepreneur, nor did he indulge in the competitive business practices common to American industrial development. In France, security and continuity of the firm were as important to the entrepreneur as profits, and the acquired rights of the small or marginal firm were respected and preserved. The family character of most French enterprises has been emphasized in explanation of these phenomena. Close identification of family name and family honor widi business holdings prescribed a minimizing of risks in the family firm, as well as consideration for the welfare of other family enterprises. Finally, in order to allow these conditions to endure, French entrepreneurs favored a high protective tariff.

It is a commentary of some sort on the blurring and shifting of disciplinary lines that I should have been asked to talk on the psychology of capitalism, and should have accepted. Though during the past fifteen years I have had a good deal of exposure to the body of theory of social and personality psychology, I have no formal training in psychology. And I am not a professor of business management. My field of specialization is economic development and social change in the low income countries—which, I think, does make me an economic historian. If I have any individual specialization, it is on the emphasis that I insist must be given to the technical study of personality formation if we are to gain a full understanding of either economic development or social change. This interest in turn is related to the psychology of capitalism. One of the simpler things that this personal history symbolizes is that old disciplinary Lines are giving way, as scholars shift their analysis to new explanatory variables. The old lines of demarcation between sociology, anthropology, and political science are becoming obsolete, all of these disciplines are nibbling away at the domain of history, and personality theory is intruding into the domain of all four.

Historians frequently use values to explain behavior. Since their studies focus on the behavior, they have neglected to measure values and change in values. The current practices of historians of values will not yield conclusions usable in the history of behavior.

What was the relationship between institutionalized poverty and protoindustrial activity in Bunzlau County of Bohemia at the end of the 1820s? The agriculturally weaker estates developed protoindustries and were therefore the first to institutionalize the care of the poor. Yet protoindustrial development decreased the vulnerability of those at the low end of the income distribution, although industrial activity attracted immigrants from agricultural estates. The immigrants competed for resources with the economically weak, thereby increasing the need for poor relief. On balance, however, protoindustrial activity ameliorated the lot of the destitute peasantry living in this mountainous region of northern Bohemia.

This article uses data on regional output and imports to examine the relationship between imports and regional growth in the Northeast. The tariff rates, both nominal and effective, are considered as evidence of national policy that may have benefited this particular region. The findings are that particular industries do benefit from tariff protection, but their location is due to regional resource advantages.

It is frequently remarked that Africa is so diverse as to defy generalization. Perhaps one generalization that can legitimately be made is that today there exists in every sphere of government in every African country a “development consciousness,” preeminent within this consciousness a dependence on economic planning for growth. The historical lessons of Europe and America are proffered and the lessons are studied and more than occasionally applied in the African setting. The Euroamerican historical record is rich and ripe for study; the African record of economic history, on the other hand, nearly does not exist. The embarrassing lacunae of historical work on the economies of Africa is pronounced, whether one is speaking of the transitional economies which through increased trading links first bridged world and African communities in perhaps an irreversible way, or whether one is speaking of the colonial economies of increased dependence, or of the “development economies” of more recent years. And there is irony here, for when seen against the often thin character of the pre-colonial historical record, work on the economic features of pre-colonial Africa seems relatively more substantial than work on the colonial and post-colonial periods.

Two propositions are suggested by a preliminary examination of the marketing of brass and brass products a century ago: first, that the manufacturer's quest for a near-monopoly market through product differentiation is not a new development; second, that this very quest of the manufacturer for near-monopoly has been the life blood of manufacturing progress.

In Claude-Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon, three great movements have taken their origin. The first is characterized by the names Enfantin and Bazard, the second by those of Comte and Taine, the third by Lesseps and Péreire. Enfantin and Bazard were men of imagination, Comte and Taine men of science, Lesseps and Péreire men of action. No other father has engendered such different children. Enfantin and Bazard made Saint-Simon the bearer of a new gospel of salvation; in his name they founded a church and strove to win for it all nations. Comte and Taine made Saint-Simon the founder of a new philosophy; from his ideas they developed a system of knowledge and gained for it the nineteenth century. Lesseps and Péreire made Saint-Simon the pioneer of a new world; from his inspiration they created waterways and railways, banks and factories.