Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-cfpbc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-17T10:04:33.268Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Business Enterprise and Globalization: Towards a Transnational Business History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 August 2017

Marten Boon
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Transnational history emerged strongly as globalization intensified in the 1990s, questioning national historiographies and creating new research agendas. Business history has not been part of this, but recent calls within the field to engage more visibly and authoritatively with debates on the history of globalization warrant a closer inspection of transnational history. The article draws on key concepts from transnational history and discusses their application in the work of, among others, Sven Beckert, Jessica Lepler, Stephanie Decker, Ray Stokes, and Michael Miller. The article argues that transnational history provides opportunities to increase business history's engagement with the history of globalization.

Keywords

globalizationmethodologymultinational enterprisetransboundary formationstransnational history
Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 91 , Special Issue 3: A Special Issue on Methodologies , Autumn 2017 , pp. 511 - 535
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 See, for instance, de Jong, Abe, Higgins, David Michael, and van Driel, Hugo, “Towards a New Business History?” Business History 57, no. 1 (2015): 5–29 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Decker, Stephanie, Kipping, Matthias, and Wadhwani, R. Daniel, “New Business Histories! Plurality in Business History Research Methods,” Business History 57, no. 1 (2015): 30–40 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Lipartito, Kenneth, “Reassembling the Economic: New Departures in Historical Materialism,” The American Historical Review 121, no. 1 (2016): 101–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Rosen, Christine M., “What Is Business History?” Enterprise & Society 14, no. 3 (2013): 475–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jones, Geoffrey, van Leeuwen, Marco H. D., and Broadberry, Stephen, “The Future of Economic, Business, and Social History,” Scandinavian Economic History Review 60, no. 3 (2012): 229 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Friedman, Walter A. and Jones, Geoffrey, “Business History: Time for Debate,” Business History Review 85, no. 1 (2011): 2–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jones, Geoffrey, “Globalization,” in The Oxford Handbook of Business History, ed. Jones, Geoffrey and Zeitlin, Jonathan (Oxford, 2008), 141–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Wilkins, Mira, “Multinational Enterprises and the Varieties of Capitalism,” Business History Review 84, no. 4 (2010): 638–45Google Scholar; Chandler, Alfred D. and Mazlish, Bruce, Leviathans: Multinational Corporations and the New Global History (Cambridge, U.K., 2007), 4 Google Scholar. See also Scranton, Philip and Fridenson, Patrick, Reimagining Business History (Baltimore, 2013), 7Google Scholar; and Ekberg, Espen and Lange, Even, “Business History and Economic Globalisation,” Business History 56, no. 1 (2014): 101–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Jones, van Leeuwen, and Broadberry, “Future of Economic, Business,” 232–35.

5 See, for instance, Amelina, Anna, Nergiz, Devrimsel D., Faist, Thomas, and Glick-Schiller, Nina, “Methodological Predicaments of Cross-Border Studies,” in Beyond Methodological Nationalism: Research Methodologies for Cross-Border Studies, ed. Amelina, Anna, Nergiz, Devrimsel D., Faist, Thomas, and Schiller, Nina Glick (Hoboken, N.J., 2012), 3–7 Google Scholar.

6 Fitzgerald, Robert, The Rise of the Global Company: Multinationals and the Making of the Modern World (Cambridge, U.K., 2015), 6–8 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Amatori, Franco and Colli, Andrea, Business History: Complexities and Comparisons (London, 2011), 14–19, 217–22Google Scholar; Langlois, Richard N., The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism: Schumpeter, Chandler, and the New Economy (London, 2007), 86–90 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lamoreaux, Naomi R., Raff, Daniel M. G., and Temin, Peter, “Beyond Markets and Hierarchies: Toward a New Synthesis of American Business History,” American Historical Review 108, no. 2 (2003): 404–33Google Scholar; Jones, Geoffrey, Multinationals and Global Capitalism: From the Nineteenth to the Twenty-First Century (Oxford, 2005)Google Scholar; Chandler, Alfred D. and Hikino, Takashi, Scale and Scope: The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism (Cambridge, Mass., 1994)Google Scholar. See also Wilkins, Mira, The History of Foreign Investment in the United States, 1914–1945 (Cambridge, Mass., 2004)Google Scholar; Wilkins, Mira and Schröter, Harm G., The Free-Standing Company in the World Economy, 1830–1996 (Oxford, 1998)Google Scholar; Jones, Geoffrey, The Evolution of International Business: An Introduction (London, 1996)Google Scholar; Jones, Geoffrey and Schröter, Harm G., The Rise of Multinationals in Continental Europe (Aldershot, 1993)Google Scholar; and Wilkins, Mira, The Maturing of Multinational Enterprise: American Business Abroad from 1914 to 1970 (Cambridge, Mass., 1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Saunier, Pierre-Yves, Transnational History (Basingstoke, 2013), 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 van der Vleuten, Erik, “Toward a Transnational History of Technology: Meanings, Promises, Pitfalls,” Technology and Culture 49, no. 4 (2008): 974–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the transnational turn in the social sciences in the 1970s, see, for instance, Iriye, Akira, Global and Transnational History: The Past, Present, and Future (Basingstoke, 2012), 8Google Scholar; and Nye, Joseph S. and Keohane, Robert O., “Transnational Relations and World Politics: An Introduction,” International Organization 25, no. 3 (1971): 331 Google Scholar.

9 Iriye, Global and Transnational History, 10–11.

10 On German debates, see, for instance, Ther, Philipp P., “Comparisons, Cultural Transfers, and the Study of Networks: Toward a Transnational History of Europe,” in Comparative and Transnational History: Central European Approaches and New Perspectives, ed. Haupt, Heinz-Gerhard and Kocka, Juergen (New York, 2010), 204–5Google Scholar; Ther, Philipp, “Beyond the Nation: The Relational Basis of a Comparative History of Germany and Europe,” Central European History 36, no. 1 (2003): 57 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On French transnational critique of the comparative method, see Werner, Michael and Zimmermann, Bénédicte, “Beyond Comparison: Histoire croisée and the Challenge of Reflexivity,” History and Theory 45, no. 1 (2006): 30–50 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ther, “Comparisons, Cultural Transfers,” 205; and Espagne, Michel, Les transferts culturels franco-allemands (Paris, 1999)Google Scholar.

11 Tyrrell, Ian, “American Exceptionalism in an Age of International History,” American Historical Review 96, no. 4 (1991): 1031–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 On entangled and connected history, see Heinz-Gerhard Haupt and Juergen Kocka, “Comparison and Beyond: Traditions, Scope, and Perspectives of Comparative History,” in Haupt and Kocka, Comparative and Transnational History, 20, 29n66; O'Connor, Maura and Cohen, Deborah, Comparison and History: Europe in Cross-National Perspective (New York, 2004), 31–35 Google Scholar; Kocka, Juergen, “Comparison and Beyond,” History and Theory 42, no. 1 (2003): 42–44 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, “Connected Histories: Notes towards a Reconfiguration of Early Modern Eurasia,” Modern Asian Studies 31, no. 3 (1997): 735–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Strayer, Robert W., The Making of the Modern World: Connected Histories, Divergent Paths (1500 to the Present) (New York, 1989)Google Scholar. On shared history, see Stoler, Ann Laura and Cooper, Frederick, “Between Metropole and Colony: Rethinking a Research Agenda,” in Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World, ed. Cooper, Frederick (Berkeley, 1997), 1–37 Google Scholar.

13 Iriye, Global and Transnational History, 10; Tyrrell, “American Exceptionalism,” 1042–43.

14 Compare: Iriye, Global and Transnational History, 37–40, and Iriye, Akira, Saunier, Pierre-Yves, and Carruthers, Jane, The Palgrave Dictionary of Transnational History (Houndmills, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Clavin, Patricia, “Time, Manner, Place: Writing Modern European History in Global, Transnational and International Contexts,” European History Quarterly 40, no. 4 (2010): 625 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Saunier, Transnational History, 117.

16 Iriye, Saunier, and Carruthers, Palgrave Dictionary, xxvi–xxxvi.

17 Saunier, Transnational History, 100; Saunier, Pierre-Yves, “Circulations, connexions et espaces transnationaux,” Genèses 57, no. 4 (2004): 110–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Grace, Richard J., Opium and Empire: The Lives and Careers of William Jardine and James Matheson (Montreal, 2014), viii Google Scholar.

19 Ibid.

20 Ibid., vii–xi.

21 Ibid., xi.

22 Saunier, Transnational History, 57–60.

23 Lepler, Jessica M., The Many Panics of 1837: People, Politics, and the Creation of a Transatlantic Financial Crisis (New York, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Ibid., 235–36.

25 Ibid., 9.

26 Farber, Hannah, “Nobody Panic: The Emerging Worlds of Economics and History in America,” Enterprise & Society 16, no. 3 (2015): 690–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Ibid., 694.

28 See, for instance, Smith, Andrew, Tennent, Kevin D., and Mollan, Simon, eds., The Impact of the First World War on International Business (New York, 2016)Google Scholar.

29 Kobrak, Christopher and Hansen, Per H., European Business, Dictatorship, and Political Risk, 1920–1945 (New York, 2004)Google Scholar.

30 See Casson, Mark and da Silva Lopes, Teresa, “Foreign Direct Investment in High-Risk Environments: An Historical Perspective,” Business History 55, no. 3 (2013): 375–404 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a discussion of adapting organizational structure to war, see Wubs, Ben, International Business and National War Interests: Unilever between Reich and Empire, 1939–45 (Hoboken, N.J., 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 Decker, Stephanie, “Building Up Goodwill: British Business, Development and Economic Nationalism in Ghana and Nigeria, 1945–1977,” Enterprise & Society 9, no. 4 (2008): 602–13Google Scholar; Decker, Stephanie, “Decolonising Barclays Bank DCO? Corporate Africanisation in Nigeria, 1945–69,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 33, no. 3 (2005): 419–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Another recent example is Smith, Andrew, “The Winds of Change and the End of the Comprador System in the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation,” Business History 58, no. 2 (2016): 179–206 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 Decker,“Decolonising Barclays Bank DCO?,” 436.

33 Shraddha Verma and Neveen Abdelrehim, “Oil Multinationals and Governments in Post-Colonial Transitions: Burmah Shell, the Burmah Oil Company and the Indian State 1947–70,” Business History (published online 2 Aug. 2016): 1–20, doi: 10.1080/00076791.2016.1193158.

34 Müller, Simone M. and Tworek, Heidi J. S., “‘The Telegraph and the Bank’: On the Interdependence of Global Communications and Capitalism, 1866–1914,” Journal of Global History 10, no. 2 (2015): 259–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 See also Tworek, Heidi J. S., “Political and Economic News in the Age of Multinationals,” Business History Review 89, no. 3 (2015): 447–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tworek, Heidi J. S. and Müller, Simone M., “Editorial: Communicating Global Capitalism,” Journal of Global History 10, no. 2 (2015): 203–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Murphy, Craig N. and Yates, JoAnne, “Afterword: The Globalizing Governance of International Communications: Market Creation and Voluntary Consensus Standard Setting,” Journal of Policy History 27, no. 3 (2015): 550–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Müller, Simone M., Wiring the World: The Social and Cultural Creation of Global Telegraph Networks (New York, 2016), 6 Google Scholar.

37 Ibid., 230.

38 Saunier, Transnational History, 106–8.

39 Beckert, Sven, Empire of Cotton: A New History of Global Capitalism (London, 2014)Google Scholar, e-book.

40 Mintz, Sidney W., Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York, 1986)Google Scholar. Recent examples are Topik, Steven C. and Wells, Allen, Global Markets Transformed: 1870–1945 (Cambridge, Mass., 2012)Google Scholar; Simpson, James, Creating Wine: The Emergence of a World Industry, 1840–1914 (Princeton, N.J., 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Perren, Richard, Taste, Trade and Technology: The Development of the International Meat Industry since 1840 (Aldershot, 2006)Google Scholar; Topik, Steven, Marichal, Carlos, and Frank, Zephyr, eds., From Silver to Cocaine: Latin American Commodity Chains and the Building of the World Economy, 1500–2000 (Durham, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Striffler, Steve and Moberg, Mark, Banana Wars: Power, Production, and History in the Americas (Durham, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Beckert, Empire of Cotton, 1196n16.

41 Beckert, Empire of Cotton, 131.

42 Ibid., 1160.

43 Jones, van Leeuwen, and Broadberry, “Future of Economic, Business,” 228.

44 Ingulstad, Mats, Perchard, Andrew, and Storli, Espen, eds., Tin and Global Capitalism: A History of the Devil's Metal, 1850–2000 (New York, 2015)Google Scholar; Gendron, Robin S., Ingulstad, Mats, and Storli, Espen, Aluminum Ore: The Political Economy of the Global Bauxite Industry (Vancouver, 2013)Google Scholar.

45 Mats Ingulstad, Andrew Perchard, and Espen Storli, “Introduction: “The Path of Civilization is Paved with Tin Cans,” in Ingulstad, Perchard, and Storli, Tin and Global Capitalism, 10.

46 For instance: Stokes, Raymond G. and Banken, Ralf, Building on Air: The International Industrial Gases Industry, 1886–2006 (Cambridge, U.K., 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jones, Geoffrey, Beauty Imagined: A History of the Global Beauty Industry (Oxford, 2010), 350 Google Scholar; da Silva Lopes, Teresa, Global Brands: The Evolution of Multinationals in Alcoholic Beverages (Cambridge, U.K., 2007), 1–2 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 185.

47 Ray Stokes and Ralf Banken, “On Industrial History as Business and Global History: Methodological Reflections Using the Case of the International Industrial Gases Industry, 1886–2006” (paper presented at EBHA/WBHC 2016, Bergen, Norway, 25–28 Aug. 2016).

48 Stokes, Ray and Banken, Ralf, “Constructing an ‘Industry’: The Case of Industrial Gases, 1886–2006,” Business History 57, no. 5 (2015): 688–704 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 Ibid., 700.

50 Porter, Michael E., The Competitive Advantage of Nations (London, 1990), 33 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

51 Porter, Michael E., The Competitive Advantage of Nations, rev. ed. with new introduction (Basingstoke, 1998), xii CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

52 Kurosawa, Takafumi, “The Competitive Advantage of Regions,” Kyoto Economic Review 81, no. 1 (2012): 2–3 Google Scholar.

53 Braudel, Fernand, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, 2 vols. (London, 1975)Google Scholar.

54 Saunier, Transnational History, 115.

55 See, for instance, Bishara, Fahad Ahmad, “A Sea of Debt: Histories of Commerce and Obligation in the Indian Ocean, c. 1850–1940,” Enterprise & Society 15, no. 4 (2014): 643–54Google Scholar. Others use sea basins more implicitly as the conduits of migrant and diaspora entrepreneurship and merchant networks, for example, Oonk, Gijsbert, Settled Strangers: Asian Business Elites in East Africa (1800–2000) (New Delhi, 2013)Google Scholar; and Aslanian, Sebouh David, From the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean: The Global Trade Networks of Armenian Merchants from New Julfa (Berkeley, 2011)Google Scholar.

56 Miller, Michael B., Europe and the Maritime World: A Twentieth-Century History (Cambridge, U.K., 2012), 3 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

57 Ibid., 10–12, 375–76.

58 Ibid., 4, 17.

59 Ibid., 6.

60 Boon, Marten, Klemann, Hein A. M., and Wubs, Ben, “Outport and Hinterland: Rotterdam Business and Ruhr Industry, 1870–2010,” in The Parallel Worlds of the Seafarer: Ashore, Afloat and Abroad, ed. Gorski, Richard and Söderqvist, Britta (Gothenburg, 2012), 201–7Google Scholar.

61 Klemann, Hein A. M. and Wubs, Ben, “River Dependence: Creating a Transnational Rhine Economy, 1850–2000,” in Perspectives on European Economic and Social History, ed. Hesse, Jan-Otmar, Kleinschmidt, Christian, Reckendrees, Alfred, and Stokes, Ray (Baden-Baden, 2014), 219–46Google Scholar.

62 Joep Schenk, “Port Barons and Ruhr Tycoons: The Origins of an Interdependent Relationship between Rotterdam and the Ruhr Area, 1870–1914” (unpublished dissertation, Erasmus University, 2015), 18–23; Marten Boon, “Oil Pipelines, Politics and International Business: The Rotterdam Oil Port, Royal Dutch Shell and the German Hinterland, 1945–1975” (unpublished dissertation Erasmus University, 2014), 30–31; K. M. Paardenkooper, “The Port of Rotterdam and the Maritime Container: The Rise and Fall of Rotterdam's Hinterland (1966–2010)” (unpublished dissertation Erasmus University, 2014), 11–14. The Central Commission for Navigation on the Rhine is an international governing body but it has no powers beyond overseeing Rhine shipping.

63 Schenk, “Port Barons and Ruhr Tycoons,” 303–8, 313–15; Boon, “Oil Pipelines,” 260–63; Paardenkooper, ” Port of Rotterdam,” 97–101.

64 See, among others, Per Högselius, Kaijser, Arne, and van der Vleuten, Erik, Europe's Infrastructure Transition: Economy, War, Nature (New York, 2015)Google Scholar; Högselius, Per, Hommels, Anique, Kaijser, Arne, and van der Vleuten, Erik, The Making of Europe's Critical Infrastructure: Common Connections and Shared Vulnerabilities (New York, 2013)Google Scholar; Högselius, Per, Red Gas: Russia and the Origins of European Energy Dependence (New York, 2012)Google Scholar; Lagendijk, Vincent, Electrifying Europe: The Power of Europe in the Construction of Electricity Networks (Amsterdam, 2009)Google Scholar; Schipper, Frank, Driving Europe: Building Europe on Roads in the Twentieth Century, Technology and European History Series (Amsterdam, 2009)Google Scholar; van der Vleuten, Erik, Anastasiadou, Irene, Lagendijk, Vincent, and Schipper, Frank, “Europe's System Builders: The Contested Shaping of Transnational Road, Electricity, and Rail Networks,” Contemporary European History 16, no. 3 (2007): 321–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and van der Vleuten, Erik and Kaijser, Arne, Networking Europe: Transnational Infrastructures and the Shaping of Europe, 1850–2000 (Sagamore Beach, Mass., 2006)Google Scholar.

65 Högselius, Kaijser, and van der Vleuten, Europe's Infrastructure Transition, xi–xviii.

66 Disco, Nil and Kranakis, Eda, Cosmopolitan Commons: Sharing Resources and Risks across Borders (Cambridge, Mass., 2013)Google Scholar.

67 Heide, Lars, Punched-Card Systems and the Early Information Explosion, 1880–1945 (Baltimore, 2009)Google Scholar; Hausman, William J., Hertner, Peter, and Wilkins, Mira, Global Electrification: Multinational Enterprise and International Finance in the History of Light and Power, 1878–2007 (Cambridge, U.K., 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.