There has been increasing interest in recent years in establishing connections between the political history and the business history of Europe in the twentieth century. This book includes new research on the interactions of politicians, businessmen and their institutions in eight countries, with particular focus on the highly-charged interwar period. Fourteen essays cover subjects under four main headings: the business-politics paradigm; banking finance; business and politics in the national socialist period; and the business community and the state. Together they form a fitting tribute to the academic scholarship and inspiration offered by Alice Teichova. In her distinguished career, and in particular since the publication of her path-breaking book An Economic Background to Munich in 1974, she has done much to stimulate a collaborative approach to international comparative work in the field of economic, political and business history. The case studies presented here demonstrate her considerable legacy to the subject.

This book reflects an increased interest in establishing connections between the political history and the business history of Europe in the twentieth century. The book includes research on the interactions of politicians, businessmen and their institutions in eight countries, with particular focus on the highly charged inter-war period. Fourteen essays cover subjects under four main headings: the business - politics paradigm; banking finance; business and politics in the National Socialist period; and the business community and the state. Together they form a fitting tribute to the academic scholarship and inspiration offered by Alice Teichova. In her distinguished career, and in particular after the publication of her path-breaking book An Economic Background to Munich in 1974, she did much to stimulate a collaborative approach to international comparative work in the field of economic, political and business history. The case studies presented here demonstrate her considerable legacy to the subject.

A collection of essays examining the interaction between politics and business in twentieth-century Europe.

Introduction -- Approaches and debates -- Forms of business organization -- Functions of enterprise -- Enterprise and society.

Austria 1867-1955 connects the political history of German-speaking provinces of the Habsburg Empire before 1914 (Vienna and the Alpine Lands) with the history of the Austrian Republic that emerged in 1918. John W. Boyer presents the case of modern Austria as a fascinating example of democratic nation-building. The construction of an Austrian political nation began in 1867 under Habsburg Imperial auspices, with the German-speaking bourgeois Liberals defining the concept of a political people (Volk) and giving that Volk a constitution and a liberal legal and parliamentary order to protect their rights against the Crown. The decades that followed saw the administrative and judicial institutions of the Liberal state solidified, but in the 1880s and 1890s the membership of the Volk exploded to include new social and economic strata from the lower bourgeoisie and the working classes. Ethnic identity was not the final structuring principle of everyday politics, as it was in the Czech lands. Rather social class, occupational culture, and religion became more prominent variables in the sortition of civic interests, exemplified by the emergence of two great ideological parties, Christian Socialism and Social Democracy in Vienna in the 1890s. The war crisis of 1914/1918 exploded the Empire, with the Crown self-destructing in the face of military defeat, chronic domestic unrest, and bitter national partisanship. But this crisis also accelerated the emergence of new structures of democratic self-governance in the German-speaking Austrian lands, enshrined in the republican Constitution of 1920. Initial attempts to make this new project of democratic nation-building work failed in the 1920s and 1930s, culminating in the catastrophe of the 1938 Nazi occupation. After 1945 the surviving legatees of the Revolution of 1918 reassembled under the four-power Allied occupation, which fashioned a shared political culture which proved sufficiently flexible to accommodate intense partisanship, resulting, by the 1970s, in a successful republican system, organized under the aegis of elite democratic and corporatist negotiating structures, in which the Catholics and Socialists learned to embrace the skills of collective but shared self-governance.

For most of the twentieth century tin was fundamental for both warfare and welfare. The importance of tin is most powerfully represented by the tin can - an invention which created a revolution in food preservation and helped feed both the armies of the great powers and the masses of the new urban society. The trouble with tin was that economically viable deposits of the metal could only be found in a few regions of the world, predominantly in the southern hemisphere, while the main centers of consumption were in the industrialized north. The tin trade was therefore a highly politically charged economy in which states and private enterprise competed and cooperated to assert control over deposits, smelters and markets. Tin provides a particularly telling illustration of how the interactions of business and governments shape the evolution of the global economic trade; the tin industry has experienced extensive state intervention during times of war, encompasses intense competition and cartelization, and has seen industry centers both thrive and fail in the wake of decolonization. The history of the international tin industry reveals the complex interactions and interdependencies between local actors and international networks, decolonization and globalization, as well as government foreign policies and entrepreneurial tactics. By highlighting the global struggles for control and the constantly shifting economic, geographical and political constellations within one specific industry, this collection of essays brings the state back into business history, and the firm into the history of international relations.

In Economic Nationalism and Globalization: Lessons from Latin America and Central Europe Henryk Szlajfer offers, against the background of developments in Latin America (mainly Brazil) and Central Europe (mainly Poland) in times of first globalization from late 19th century until late 1930s, a reinterpretation of economic nationalism both as an analytical category and historical experience. Also, critically explored are attempts at proto-economic nationalism in early 19th century Poland and Latin America as well as links between economic nationalism and the emergence of integral political nationalism and authoritarianism. Economic nationalism is interpreted as historically significant world-wide phenomenon intimately linked with the birth, development and crisis of capitalist modernity and as a response to underdevelopment under first globalization. Continuity of economic nationalism under present globalization is suggested.

Capitalism in Chaos explores an often-overlooked consequence and paradox of the First World War—the prosperity of business elites and bankers in service of the war effort during the destruction of capital and wealth by belligerent armies. This study of business life amid war and massive geopolitical changes follows industrialists and policymakers in Central Europe as the region became crucially important for German and subsequently French plans of economic and geopolitical expansion in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Based on extensive research in sixteen archives, five languages, and four states, Máté Rigó demonstrates that wartime destruction and the birth of "war millionaires" were two sides of the same coin. Despite the recent centenaries of the Great War and the Versailles peace treaties, knowledge of the overall impact of war and border changes on business life remains sporadic, based on scant statistics and misleading national foci. Consequently, most histories remain wedded to the viewpoint of national governments and commercial connections across national borders. Capitalism in Chaos changes the static historical perspective by presenting Europe's East as the economic engine of the continent. Rigó accomplishes this paradigm shift by focusing on both supranational regions—including East-Central and Western Europe—as well as the eastern and western peripheries of Central Europe, Alsace-Lorraine and Transylvania, from the 1870s until the 1920s. As a result, Capitalism in Chaos offers a concrete, lively history of economics during major world crises, with a contemporary consciousness toward inequality and disparity during a time of collapse.

Though in its infancy, the European enterprise has the power to change both the perception and the actual face of Europe. This book evaluates the future potential of this new type of enterprise. The contributors look for European convergence at all levels of the economy: firm, branch, state, and EU. They stress various points of view, using diverse methods, and propose different measures.

The London School of Economics (LSE) has been and continues to be one of the most important global centres for economics. With six chapters on themes in LSE economics and 29 chapters on the lives and work of LSE economists, this volume shows how economics became established at the School, how it produced some of the world’s best-known economists, including Lionel Robbins and Bill Phillips, plus Nobel Prize winners, such as Friedrich Hayek, John Hicks and Christopher Pissarides, and how it remains a global force for the very best in teaching and research in economics. With original contributions from a stellar cast, this volume provides economists – especially those interested in macroeconomics and the history of economic thought – with the first in-depth analysis of LSE economics.