Occasionally books appear that are broad enough in subject or methodology to afford scholars in various specialties a useful opportunity to look at the same material from different viewpoints. Like other documents, works of history tend to answer only those questions asked of them, and the juxtaposition of the questions important to readers of diverse scholarly backgrounds may be in itself illuminating. For this, the first in a continuing series of review colloquia, we invited a specialist in British population movements, a historical geographer, an economist who has done quantitative work in the field of colonial immigration, and an authority on the economy of British North America to consider Bernard Bailyn's Pulitzer Prize-winning study.

In this article, the curator of manuscripts and archives at the Harvard Business School's Baker Library discusses the opportunities and difficulties confronting present-day archivists as they seek to establish rational collecting policies for their repositories. Ms. Lathrop first describes the past focus of Baker Library's collection decisions and the strengths to which those emphases have led. She then discusses some areas of less comprehensive coverage, as well as the general problems archivists face in dealing with twentieth-century materials. She points out that collecting gaps tend to be replicated among other repositories, a situation leading her to believe that a national collecting policy, developed by both historians and archivists, is necessary to ensure the widest possible documentation of the varieties of American business history.

The lengthy dispute about the role of big business in Hitler's Third Reich has generally portrayed business leaders either as instigators or as victims. The experience of Norton Company, an American multinational in Germany between 1933 and 1945, fits neither role. In this article, Professor Cheape demonstrates that Norton's German and American managers acted as outsiders compelled to play a part for their firm's long–run self–interest. As a result, Norton executives variously cooperated with, ignored, or violated Nazi policies, presenting a richer and more complex pattern of behavior than is usually pictured.

American multinational advertising agencies first made inroads into the British advertising industry in the early twentieth century. Some were pioneers, but most came to Britain to service the advertising of American–based multinational companies. Their impact on British advertising was significant, particularly from 1945 until the late 1970s, years when American multinational agencies dominated the top end of the business. The British staged a major counter-challenge in both the British and American markets in the early 1980s, however, with considerable success. The basis of the British challenge was improved access to capital, which permitted expansion through acquisition, rather than the servicing of British–based multinational companies. Professor West places these developments in the context of multinational enterprise theory, using new data and evidence drawn largely from trade sources.

The history of mining enterprise has recently become an important growth industry in both African and British Commonwealth business history. A number of important multinational mining corporations have in recent years opened their archives on assimilated or restructured parent companies active in overseas enterprise in the first half of this century. In the following essay, Professor Dumett surveys the extensive holdings of the leading British gold mining company in West Africa, the Ashanti Goldfields Corporation.