Business History Review

This article examines the collusion between the only two major banks to operate in British West Africa for most of the colonial period after 1916, Barclays and the Bank of British West Africa. The companies’ records reveal that the alliance was more far-reaching than has previously been shown, escalating to include not only comprehensive price-fixing but also restrictions on the products offered. The article considers the reactions of African and European customers and the colonial governments, and analyzes the motives that sustained the collusion for so long and the political circumstances that permitted it. The arrangement was partly a defensive response to a perception that the market was too small for full rivalry, but there was a rent-seeking element too. Finally, the article explores the implications of the bank alliance for the broader economies, reflecting on the relation between the security that the banks achieved through their agreements and their very cautious lending policies.

Although free-standing companies helped facilitate international capital flows in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, their ability to operate effectively over the long run in a global economy has been questioned. This essay looks at one free-standing company, the Penang Sugar Estates, Ltd., in British Malaya to assess its managerial performance and strategies for transferring information. Through diversification, subcontracting, reorganization, and increased tolerance for local knowledge, the firm surmounted the information asymmetries that gave trouble during its early decades and increased profits. The Malayan sugar industry benefited from its imperial location, which brought significant advantages.

Development, modernity, and industrialization became dominant themes in corporate advertising in Africa in the 1950s and remained prevalent through the following two decades while many African nations were gaining independence. British businesses operating there created a publicity strategy that couched their presence in less developed countries in terms of a commitment and a positive contribution to the progress of the new states. Eventually, British companies tried to "Africanize" their corporate image through these campaigns.

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America Transformed: Sixty Years of Revolutionary Change, 1941–2001. By Richard M. Abrams. Reviewed By Howard Brick.

Death Rode the Rails: American Railroad Accidents and Safety, 1828–1965. By Mark Aldrich. Reviewed By Marc J. Stern.

How New York Became American, 1890–1924. By Angela M. Blake. Reviewed By Daniel Levinson Wilk.

The Social Life of Coffee: The Emergence of the British Coffeehouse. By Bryan Cowan. Reviewed By Michelle Craig McDonald.

Empresas y empresarios en la historia de Colombia. Siglos xix–xx: Una colección de estudios recientes. [Firms and Entrepreneurs in the History of Colombia in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: A Collection of Recent Studies]. 2 vols. Edited By Carlos Dávila L. de Guevara. Reviewed By John Womack Jr.

Planting a Capitalist South: Masters, Merchants, and Manufacturers in the Southern Interior, 1790–1860. By Tom Downey. Reviewed By Stephen A. West.

Radical Unionism in the Midwest, 1900–1950. By Rosemary Feurer. Reviewed By Tami J. Friedman.

Robber Baron: The Life of Charles Tyson Yerkes. By John Franch. Reviewed By Perry R. Duis.

Da danske møbler blev moderne: Historien om dansk møbeldesigns storhedstid [Danish Modern: A History of the Golden Age of Danish Furniture Design]. By Per H. Hansen. Reviewed By Jan Pedersen.

John Sutter: A Life on the North American Frontier. By Albert Hurtado. Reviewed By Ryan J. Carey

Les archives des entreprises sous l'Occupation: Conservation, accessibilité et apport [The Archives of Companies under the (German) Occupation: Conservation, Accessibility and Contribution]. Edited By Hervé Joly. Reviewed By Florence Hachez-Leroy.

Pull: Networking and Success since Benjamin Franklin. By Pamela Walker Laird. Reviewed By Kathy Peiss.

Dynasties: Fortunes and Misfortunes of the World's Greatest Business Families. By David S. Landes. Reviewed By Harold James.

The Bourgeois Virtues. Ethics for an Age of Commerce. By Deirdre N. McCloskey. Reviewed By Charles Tilly

The World's Newest Profession: Management Consulting in the Twentieth Century. By Christopher D. McKenna. Reviewed By Neil Fligstein.

Reluctant Capitalists: Bookselling and the Culture of Consumption. By Laura J. Miller. Reviewed By Michael Winship.

A Foot in the Past: Consumers, Producers and Footwear in the Long Eighteenth Century. By Giorgio Riello. Reviewed By Michael Zakim.

Debtor Diplomacy: Finance and American Foreign Relations in the Civil War Era, 1837–1873. By Jay Sexton. Reviewed By Mark Wilson.

Innovation + Independence: The Reserve Bank of New Zealand, 1973–2002. By John Singleton with Arthur Grimes, Gary Hawke, and Frank Holmes. Reviewed By Gordon Boyce.

Advertising on Trial: Consumer Activism and Corporate Public Relations in the 1930s. By Inger L. Stole. Reviewed By Elizabeth Fones-Wolf.

From Silver to Cocaine: Latin American Commodity Chains and the Building of the World Economy, 1500–2000. Edited By Steven Topik, Carlos Marichal, and Zephyr Frank. Reviewed By Victor Bulmer-Thomas.

The Canton Trade: Life and Enterprise on the China Coast, 1700–1845. By Paul A. Van Dyke. Reviewed By Madeleine Zelin.

Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations: A Story of Economic Discovery. By David Warsh. Reviewed By Michael A. Bernstein.

The Merchants of Zigong: Industrial Entrepreneurship in Early Modern China. By Madeleine Zelin. Reviewed By Christopher A. Reed.

Panic! Markets, Crises, and Crowds in American Fiction. By David A. Zimmerman. Reviewed By Janice M. Traflet.