It is with great sadness that I open this Introduction with the tragic news of the death of our friend and colleague Anne Fleming. Anne, who was Professor of Law at the University of Georgetown, died unexpectedly on August 25th, 2020. At a young age Anne had already produced outstanding scholarship at the increasingly important intersection of legal and busines history. Her career held so much promise. At the same time, she did much very valuable work for the Business History Conference as both a committee member and a Trustee. Most of all, Anne was a much-loved member of our community and she will be very deeply missed. Enterprise and Society will carry fuller tributes to Anne’s life and work in due course.
This has been a challenging year for all of us. Our personal and working lives have been severely disrupted and some of us may have encountered illness and loss. Academic publishing has not escaped the turmoil. We have all experienced increasing demands on our time and energy as we face up to new working realities, such as online teaching and working from home. In this context, it is entirely understandable that it has become increasingly difficult to secure reviewers this year. We have all had to rethink our priorities at times. Likewise, both authors and reviewers have sometimes struggled to make deadlines. Similarly, especially in the first half of the year, production processes were sometimes impacted as our colleagues at Cambridge University Press went through similar processes of adjustment. Given these very difficult circumstances I am only ever more appreciative of the wonderful commitment and effort shown by all our authors and reviewers, of the wonderful support I receive from Carol Lockman and Roger Horowitz at Hagley and from colleagues on the Print Media Oversight Committee of the Business History Conference, and of the strong collaborative relationship we enjoy with colleagues at Cambridge. We have been successful in meeting these challenges, I think. I am proud of the work we have done together. The journal has appeared to schedule throughout the year with a full complement of, I hope, very interesting articles. Indeed, more than that, I think Enterprise and Society continues to go from strength to strength. Submissions continue to increase steadily and, I believe, show greater and greater diversity across almost every dimension. In response to the growth in submissions we have negotiated an increased page allowance with Cambridge, allowing us to bring you more exciting new work in an increasingly timely fashion.
The commitment shown this year by all who contribute to Enterprise and Society has revealed business history as a real community, not merely an aggregation of individual scholars. Sadly, the focal point of our community, the annual meeting, has been very severely impacted by the global pandemic. The 2020 meeting went ahead as planned in Charlotte but in a necessarily reduced form. The 2021 meeting, scheduled for Detroit, will now take place online. Nonetheless, traditions remain, and I am delighted to say that this issue contains, as is normal, both the Presidential Address and the Krooss Prize summaries. In an extremely timely address Ed Balleisen considered “The Prospects for Collaborative Research in Business History.” There were four Krooss Prize finalists in 2020: Kristen Alff, “Levantine Joint-stock Companies and 19th-Century Global Capitalism”; Grace Ballor, “Agents of Integration: Multinational Firms and the European Union”; Koji Hirata, “Steel Metropolis: Industrial Manchuria and the Making of Chinese Socialism”; and Jessica Ann Levy, “Black Power, Inc.: Global American Business and the Post-Apartheid City.” The 2020 Krooss Prize was won by Jessica Ann Levy.
The Presidential Address and the Krooss Prize summaries have not left a great deal of space for original research articles in this issue; nonetheless we have been able to include two fascinating papers. First, Martin Öhman explores the world of “The American Institute and the Problem of Interest Group Mobilization in Antebellum United States.” Second, Paolo di Martino, Mark Latham, and Michelangelo Vasta provide a panoramic survey of “Bankruptcy and Insolvency Laws Around Europe (1850–2015): Institutional Change and Institutional Features.” Alongside these we are proud to present a number of book reviews.
I normally save my thanks until the conclusion of the Introduction to issue No. 4 but on this occasion have given them already. But before closing it is vital that I give thanks by name to all of the reviewers who have provided such sterling service over the last two months. Thank you.
