BUSINESS HISTORY NEWS The Newsletter of the Association Of Business Historians April 2002 No. 23 ISSN 9062-9440 COUNCIL MEMBERS President: Mary Rose Secretary/Treasurer: Howard Cox Newsletter Editor: Steven Tolliday Past President: Geoffrey Jones President-Elect: Jim Bamberg Council Member: Andrew Popp Ex officio: Coleman Prize winner 2000 Janet Greenlees Webmaster Simon Mowatt 2 CONTENTS Visit the ABH Website Archives for Business History: (i) Melanie Aspey on the Rothschild Archive (ii) Janice Taylor on North-West Access to Archives project Conference Reports (i) Accounting, Business and Financial History Conference (ii) Business History of Risk Forthcoming Conferences and Calls for Papers Seminar programmes Grants Special Feature: Prizes for Business History Books by ABH Members Discounts for ABH Members EDITORIAL This issue includes full details of the 2002 ABH Conference, which will be held in Reading on 28-29 June. It also continues a series of articles highlighting archives of interest to business historians, and contains a special feature on Prizes in Business History. Besides this it also provides full listings of forthcoming conferences, seminars, calls for papers and grants that should be of interest to ABH members. Attention of ABH members is also called to the availability of significant book and journal discounts now available to ABH members (see back cover). This is the last issue of Business History News to be edited by Steven Tolliday (University of Leeds). Starting with the October 2002 issue for the next two years, the newsletter will be edited by Andrew Popp. Items and correspondence for the next issue (October 2002) should be sent to: Andrew Popp, School of Management, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, Surrey TW20 OEX E-mail: [email protected] 3 VISIT THE ABH WEBSITE http://www.sbu.ac.uk/abh (Note: Major site update February 2002) The Association’s website gives members up-to-date information about the ABH and its activities, promotes awareness of the association, and encourages the study of business history. The site has detailed links to resources for business historians, such as archives, organisations and business history centres. The links are up-to-date, and the site also offers descriptions and evaluations of the resources available. In addition there are conference announcements, conference reviews and funding information – including information on awards such as the Coleman and Cass prizes. The ABH aims to continuously develop the site into a resource which business historians and their students will be able to use as the first port of call. The site is hosted at South Bank University by Simon Mowatt. Please let Simon have feedback on additional resources that members feel should be added to the site. Please bookmark the new site and be sure to spread the address to interested colleagues and students. Contact: Simon Mowatt ([email protected]) 4 ARCHIVES FOR BUSINESS HISTORY The Rothschild Archive By Melanie Aspey Based on the business records of the merchant bank N M Rothschild & Sons, The Rothschild Archive is the responsibility of a charitable trust created in 1999 to ensure the future of the collection and to encourage the development of an international centre for research into the many facets of history in which the Rothschild family has played a part. In spite of enormous interest in the Rothschild family and detailed research on the family itself and its role in society, large tracts of the Archive remain almost untouched. When the archivists produced a Guide to the Collection1 they had to break the seals on dozens of packets of papers that had been wrapped up in the 1920s when a basic list of the collection was compiled. Some areas of potential interest to business historians are described below. Nathan Rothschild as a Manchester textile merchant, 1798 to 1809 Nathan Rothschild left his native Frankfurt in 1798 to travel to Britain and to establish his own division of the family trading business, which depended heavily on British textiles. The records of this business - correspondence and accounts - document the network of contacts built up by the firm, both in Britain and throughout Europe. Nathan dealt with printers in Paisley and Yorkshire, and shipped his goods to the continent via Hull. Four volumes of cutters' payments and wages books name the local workers paid to finish off the cloth, while the jewel in the crown of the collection, 'The Cotton Book' is a record of the samples of the textiles that Nathan sold to his customers. The London Business After a decade in Manchester, Nathan Rothschild moved to London. He took premises in the City of London, with a warehouse attached so that he could continue to trade in goods, but the next decade was dominated by the family's work for the British government, supplying coin to Wellington's armies and paying subsidies to British allies. The business remained interested in certain commodities, and the Archive contains voluminous correspondence from the bank's contacts with shippers, dock companies and forwarding agents across Europe. One of 1 The Rothschild Archive: Guide to the Collection published by The Rothschild Archive, 2000 5 the more fascinating aspects to the correspondence is the possibility of tracing business networks. For example, G. S. Meyer from the Bradford firm of Meyer & Schönfeld2, which dealt mainly in worsted stuffs, opened an account with Rothschilds in London in December 1838 with a letter of credit for £5,000 by Michaelson & Benedicks. The account was designed to allow purchases from small producers around Leeds, Manchester and Bradford. Michaelson & Benedicks3 of Stockholm had enjoyed a business relationship with Nathan Rothschild's father in Frankfurt since 1791. The Rothschilds were responsible in large part for the development of railway systems in Europe. The family and their technical advisers toured Britain to examine the growing railway network, subsequently placing orders for raw materials and components with Nasmyth Gaskell & Co., Bridgewater Foundry, Patricroft, Manchester (for locomotives for the Kaiser Ferdinands Norbahn in Austria) and with Stephenson and other companies. Members of the family in Britain were directors of the French Chemin de fer du Nord, and received detailed weekly accounts of the running of that system, which even noted incidents of line guards being asleep on duty. The Royal Mint Refinery Nathan Rothschild began to deal in bullion from 1809 and his successors retained a close involvement with many aspects of this precious commodity, receiving gold dust from agents in California and Australia, securing rights over the Spanish quicksilver mine in Almadén (in order to sell the quicksilver to refiners of gold and silver bullion) and in 1852, taking over the lease of the Royal Mint Refinery in the East End of London. The Refinery business was sold to Engelhards in 1967, at which point many of its records were destroyed but enough survive to make a study of the history of the business a potentially rewarding project. Further information about the Archive is available at www.rothschildarchive.org Please address any enquiries to [email protected] 2 RAL XI/38/178: Meyer & Schönfeld, 1838-1845, 1 box 3 RAL XI/38/179: Michaelson & Benedicks, 1826-1859, 2 boxes 6 Mills, Mansions and Corner Shops Mills, Mansions and Corner Shops is the second phase of the North West’s Access to Archives (A2A) project. A consortium of 26 archive repositories in the area has been created to raise funds and carry out this project. A2A is the English strand of the scheme to produce a UK wide archive network and aims to create a virtual national archives catalogue by converting paper-based finding aids and making the information available from one source on the World Wide Web. www.a2a.pro.gov.uk This project is part of Phase 2 of the national project and will contribute 56,000 pages. A2A stands alongside sister projects in Scotland, Wales and the higher education sector, which together will constitute an archives network across the UK and will open up archives to the whole public, in England, the UK and world wide. The project will involve the retroconversion of catalogues of Business, Industry, Family and Estate archives. These topics have been selected as being representative of the historical development of the north west region. Once predominately a rural area, the region was at the heart of the industrial revolution, playing a part in trade, commerce and industrial innovation. The archives selected for this project show this development and include collections of regional, national and even international importance. The businesses and industries, which will be covered in this project, are disparate, yet representative of the region and its history. Archives from the smallest local tradesman, to the regional offices of local industries are included, along with the whole national archive of the gas industry. The addition of these records to the A2A database would produce a major resource for economic historians, local historians and social history, with particular strengths being: *Trade (national and international) *Cotton *Coal *Gas *Chemicals *Solicitors and the Law The archives comprise financial records, ledgers and accounts, administrative documents, wages and personnel records, correspondence, 7 plans and records of activities. These records give an insight into the workings of individual businesses, but also provide evidence of the impact of industry and business on a community