The Extensive Side of Nineteenth-Century Military Economy: The Tent Industry in the Northern United States during the Civil War

Because most histories of military-industrial relations haverested on the examples of arms production and shipbuilding,balanced accounts of military procurement and technologies duringthe nineteenth century are difficult to find. In fact, weaponsand ships accounted for a relatively small fraction of all thegoods and services consumed by nineteenth-century armed forces.This article, which describes the tent industry in the UnitedStates during the Civil War, suggests that many military enterprisesof the period were characterized by an industrial dynamic thatwas relatively extensive rather than intensive. In the U.S.tent industry, the leading military contractors were mercantilefirms, which stood at the center of disintegrated productionand distribution networks. Featuring relatively low-capitalproduction arrangements, large numbers of women workers, andpowerful mercantile intermediaries who linked manufacturersand army purchasing agents, the Civil War tent business is anexample that challenges traditional accounts of the economicfoundations of nineteenth-century military capability.     

Nicholas Onuf and Peter Onuf. Nations, Markets, and War: Modern History and the American Civil War

The bloodiest war ever fought by the United States, the CivilWar remains a focal point of American historical writing andresearch. How could Americans embark in such a war where brothersfought brothers? And what does this experience tell us aboutthe nature of the American union, before and after the CivilWar? Two brothers, historians Nicholas and Peter Onuf, confrontthese questions in a wide-ranging study that will challengetheir readers's     

The Role of Pollution Regulation and Litigation in the Development of the U.S. Meatpacking Industry, 1865-1880

Business historians have treated the emergence of large, modern,vertically integrated meatpacking firms in the second half ofthe nineteenth century as the economically rational and inevitableproduct of the industry's search for ways to maximize profitsthrough technological innovation, vertical integration, andthe achievement of economies of scale and scope. This is onlypart of the story, however. Society's efforts to force the industryto abate its environmental pollution through government regulationand private lawsuits also stimulated and shaped these processesof modernization.     

Steven F. Wilson. Learning on the Job: When Business Takes on Public Schools

Plagued by failures, the corporate educational movement wasnearly consumed by the flames after the dot-com stock crash.Out of the ashes, however, now comes a remarkable book by StevenF. Wilson. Readers are treated to a most unusual set of meaculpas involving corporate excesses and mistakes. Yet, Wilsondoes not perform any last-rites, but rather joins contritionwith frank suggestions to reposition a new generation of educationmanagement organizations (EMOs) for the coming day when No ChildLeft Behind mandates that     

Robert G. Angevine. The Railroad and the State: War, Politics, and Technology in Nineteenth-Century America. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2004. xvii + 351 pp. ISBN 0-8047-4239-1, $65.00 (cloth).

Robert Angevine’s excellent monograph offers valuableinsights for historians of technology, business, and the military.This book details the "symbiotic" relationship of railroadsand the military, showing how the relationship evolved duringthe nineteenth century. Angevine lays out his story chronologically. The fact that theUnited States was going to need some sort of transportationinfrastructure in order to move troops in a timely manner wasfirst realized after the War of 1812. As a result,     

Remnants of the U.S. Civil War and modern consumer behavior

This research introduces a construct termed regional animosity. Regional animosity represents individuals' preference for their own (ingroup) geographic region and incorporates elements of animosity toward people from an outgroup region. The construct emanates from an investigation of the historical divide between the northern and southern regions of the United States. The interrelated theories of social identity, stereotype activation, and consumer animosity provide theoretical rationale for the existence of regional animosity and its role in affecting consumers' evaluative judgments and price sensitivity. Data from three studies demonstrate that research respondents showed strong preference for products/services that originate in their home region. Results further reveal that scores on a scale measuring regional animosity correlated with the extent to which consumers chose products/services from their own region and the degree to which they were willing to pay premium prices to obtain these items. These findings support prior theory in a novel context and implicate a potentially important line of inquiry for future research. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Daniel W. Hamilton. The Limits of Sovereignty: Property Confiscation in the Union and the Confederacy during the Civil War

The Limits of Sovereignty is a concise, well written, and wellargued account of the shifting relationship between state powerand individual property rights during a defining moment in UShistory. Through its examination of government confiscationin the north and south, the book provides historians with insightinto the legal factors contributing to economic and businessdevelopments during the Civil War and Reconstruction. DanielHamilton argues that the various confiscation acts of the CivilWar,     

CSR, Co-optation and Resistance: The Emergence of New Agonistic Relations Between Business and Civil Society

This article examines the theoretical implications of the changing relationships between NGOs and businesses that have emerged as a response to the evolving agenda around CSR and sustainable development. In particular, it focuses upon examining whether greater engagement from non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in this area reflects a process of appropriation and co-optation of protest by the business community. To examine this process, the article considers two forms of appropriation—appropriation of language and appropriation via participation—as a basis for discussion. While co-optation pressures are identified within both areas, the article argues that co-optation is identified almost as an inevitable outcome of engagement without significant consideration of the ability of movements to identify and respond to these processes. In identifying an alternative approach, the article utilises Mouffe’s framework of agonistic pluralism. Mouffe’s framework, it is argued, provides an understanding of the way in which agonistic relationships are emerging between NGOs and businesses while highlighting the continuance of conflict between parties struggling to influence the contested interpretations of responsible business.     

The German Octopus: The British Metal Corporation and the Next War, 1914-1939

After World War I, the nonferrous metals trade played a criticalrole in Britain's preparations for a future European war. Yetit has attracted little attention. The British Metal Corporation(BMC) was formed at the end of the Great War as a state-sponsoredcorporation to conduct the development of the nonferrous metalsindustry on behalf of the British state. This article uses thepapers of the BMC to explore the politics of a strategicallyvital trade, the functioning of the British state's institutionalmemory, and the role of business in appeasement and rearmament.It concludes that the state-sponsored corporation was, on balance,an effective strategic instrument. Although politics, trade,and strategy proved difficult to reconcile with one another,the pursuit of profit did not dictate business attitudes towardNazi Germany in the 1930s.     

John V. C. Nye. War, Wine, and Taxes: The Political Economy of Anglo-French Trade, 1689-1900

This is not a long book: an introduction and eight chaptersamounting to 120 pages with additional appendices. However,it eruditely covers and raises a wide variety of intriguingissues that give it far greater impact than the slim volumemight at first suggest. The book is fundamentally about challenging the assertion thatBritain was a free trader in the nineteenth century and wasa free trader when compared specifically with France. From theoutset, John Nye sets     

The Sino-Japanese War and the Formation of the State Enterprise System in China: A Case Study of the Dadukou Iron and Steel Works, 1938-1945

This article examines the formation of China's state enterprisesystem, using the case of the Dadukou Iron and Steel Works (DISW).I argue that the basic institutional arrangement of the DISW,and by extension other state-owned enterprises, consisted ofa bureaucratic governance structure, distinctive managementand incentive mechanisms, and the provision of social servicesand welfare. This arrangement took shape during the Sino-JapaneseWar, with the sustained systemic crisis and the nature and characterof the institutional endowments leading to the formation ofChina's state enterprise system. In considering implicationsfor understanding institutional change, I suggest that crisisshapes radical institutional change and that both path dependenceand path independence characterize such change.     

The strategies of the Spanish cotton textile companies before the Civil War: The road to longevity

This study, based on family business theories, offers an innovative vision of the Spanish cotton industry. It proves that Spanish cotton companies – just like their European counterparts – implemented a strategy that was consistent with their nature as family businesses and went beyond the economic-institutional frames within which they developed. The article identifies this strategy as ‘conservative’, because its main objectives were longevity and family control and because it was based on a high percentage of own resources, low levels of indebtedness and organic growth, thus sacrificing profitability for the sake of security.     

The Business(es) of the Chinese State

The state industrial sector is the Achilles heel of China's otherwise remarkable economic performance over the past two decades. Most other countries in transition from socialism have transformed SOEs into commercial entities through systematic, market‐driven restructuring and privatisation to become more efficient and competitive. In China, a series of innovative, if often administrative, insitutional reforms since 1978 have begun to achieve the Chinese authorities' goal of ‘separating governemtn from business.’ But the Chinese State still maintains ownership of key enterprises, and government agencies carry out shareholder functions typically performed by private owners in a market economy. Although privatisation and restructuring of SOEs is occurring, it mostly pertains to small and medium sized firms. For the principal businesses, by contrast, the creation of large state enterprise groups and holding companies (and experiments in other forms of ‘state asset management’) have become the main form of restructuring. Today, China's SOEs still account for more than one‐quarter of national production, two‐thirds of total assets, more than half of urban employment and almost three‐quarters of investment. While direct budgetary subsidies have declined, explicit and implicit subsidies are still making their way to prop up loss‐making SOEs through the financial system and other routes. At the same time, SOEs are still producing non‐marketable products, resulting in a sizeable inventory overhang. These inefficiencies and distortions represent a drain on the country's resources and thus present a challenge to the Chinese leadership for reform. This paper sheds light on these challenges by analysing the incentives and constraints on China's SOE reform programme. Four critical aspects of the reforms are highlighted and evaluated against the backdrop of international experience: clarification of property rights; establishment of large group/holding companies and other new organisational structures; improved corporate governance incentives; and implementation of international financial accounting and auditing practices. The paper concludes with policy recommendations.     

Drivers of Durable Peace: The Role of Justice in Negotiating Civil War Termination

Attaining durable peace after a civil war has become a major challenge, as many negotiated settlements relapse into violence. How can civil war negotiations be conducted and peace agreements formulated so as to contribute to lasting, durable peace? Previous research has focused on the durability of peace agreements, measured as the absence of violence. This study develops an index to measure durable peace for a period of 8 years after the agreement had been reached, and evaluates the new measure using an existing data set. We ask whether impacts on durable peace are similar or different to those found for the durability of agreements. This question suggests a number of hypotheses that are evaluated with 16 cases of peace agreements. Stable agreements are shown to mediate the relationship between equality provisions in peace agreements and durable peace, and to also mediate the relationship between procedural justice and the reconciliation component of durable peace. Interestingly, economic stability is not a dividend of peace agreements.     

Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi. The Worlds of Herman Kahn: The Intuitive Science of Thermonuclear War. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005. 387 pp. ISBN 0-674-01714-5, $26.95.

When Herman Kahn published On Thermonuclear War in 1960, heshocked readers by thinking the unthinkable, that is, by visualizingthe effects of various levels of preparedness and civil defenseon the rates of survival in the event of a devastating thermonuclearattack on the United States. As he did so, however, Kahn cloakedhis futurological scenarios in a strange mix of mathematicalcalculation, gallows humor, and a tendency to ignore some ofthe hideous consequences of thermonuclear