British Engineering and the New Zealand Market, 1945-60
Britain's lack-lustre industrial performance after the Second World War is seen through the mirror of an important external market, New Zealand. The spotlight is on the failure of British exporters of diesel electric locomotives and heavy electrical plant to make the most of apparently excellent opportunities in New Zealand between 1945 and 1960. British firms occupied dominant positions in the relevant segments of the New Zealand market in the early post-war period, but frittered their advantage away. Development and production expertise was in limited supply, and was spread too thinly. Cartel pricing alienated public sector customers in New Zealand and encouraged them to give orders to other countries. While these are not novel charges to lay against British manufacturers, there is considerable value in having them confirmed by evidence from a peripheral market that has been relatively neglected by business historians.
British Business History: Review of the Periodical Literature for 2002
Past authors of this review of the periodical literature in British business history have adopted a range of approaches to structuring their surveys, but the most common has been to segment along broad sectoral lines. However, given a number of recent developments in business history, it is no longer clear that this is the best way in which to make sense of the continuing evolution of the discipline. A concern for developing cross-sectoral studies, and comparative and inter-disciplinary approaches, in combination with an ever-expanding pool of thematic pre-occupations, means that very often the apparent sectoral focus of an article is little more than a convenient anchor with which to ‘ground’ the core issues. In writing this review, and, in particular, in deciding the system of categorisation to be employed, I have sought as far as possible to be guided by the literature itself. There is no doubt, though, that other systems of categorisation – including a sectoral one – could have been used; this, then, is just one ‘route-map’ through the increasingly rich periodical literature in British business history. A further issue is where to draw the boundaries of the literature to be surveyed. Again it is possible that some of the developments in the discipline outlined above are making this a more complex question – business history now seems to be engaging with both many more varieties of history and a wider range of social sciences beyond economics. Gaining in prominence, for example, are the management sciences; a reflection perhaps of the increasing extent to which British business historians are making their homes in schools of business and management. It is apparent, then, that business historians read (and write) in increasingly diverse ways that overlap only very imperfectly. The solution taken here is an essentially empirical or inductive one; the subject of a paper must impinge on the study of British business from an historical perspective. This definition will necessary exclude much of interest to many historians of British business. Finally, in terms of temporal focus, British business history seems to be becoming more contemporary, with relatively little exploration of the early and pre-modern roots of business. In sum, we deal in turn with: governance, structure and organisation; public policy and government/business relationships; information, knowledge and learning; business and society; agriculture and the pre-industrial and theoretical developments and new agendas.
Urban Identities and Catastrophe: Izmir and Salonica at the End of the Ottoman Empire*
Two huge fires dramatically influenced the urban development of Salonica and Izmir, in 1917 and in 1922, respectively. These catastrophes occurred after the Ottoman Empire fell, and Salonica and Izmir had shifted into new national contexts. The fires mainly destroyed the districts that were transformed during the late‐Ottoman period. These districts became the cosmopolitan façades of modern Izmir and Salonica. The post‐fires' tabula rasa provided an opportunity for Greek and Turkish politicians and European planners to change the urban identity of both cities. Moreover, the Lausanne Treaty of 1923 transformed their multicultural societies also. Reconstruction plans had been thought to de‐Ottomanize and remove the previous idea of the towns and their multiplicity, interpreting new cultural and nationalist feeling. Here, I emphasize how modernity was interpreted before and after the fires, and point out contradictions between ideological aspects of planning and how the first urban districts were built during the 1920s.