Although the growth of inexpensive, widely distributed magazines that began in the United States in the 1890s has been noted, the role played by magazines directed specifically toward female readers has received little scholarly attention. The following article examines contents, personnel, and readership and advertising, pricing, production, and distribution techniques to demonstrate that the women's magazines were pioneers in many of these areas.

Operating in an economy that was still primarily export-import based and in a cultural environment suspicious of all business interests, members of Brazil's nineteenth-century business elite laced many obstacles to legitimizing their activities. Ironically, erforts to win acceptance tended to fragment business groups and eventually opened the way for a new industrial bourgeoisie at the expense of the overseas traders.

By examining the activities of the Bank of Nova Scotia, this article demonstrates that Canadian banks established branches in the Caribbean to finance trade with the United States rather than with Canada. The expertise of Canadian banks in the management of branch networks and in the finance of international trade was the basis on which they successfully filled an important gap in the provision of banking services for the Hispanic Caribbean and offered strong competition to the American banks that expanded into the region after 1914.

Focusing on the Caigo Fleet Iron Company and its local competitors in Britain's Northeast, this article examines one company's response to changes in the steelmaking environment. By providing data at the firm level, the article is able to highlight specific contributing factors that are often invisible when scholars discuss Britain's industrial decline in the aggregate.

The Draper Company's commitment to research and development was unparalleled among other nineteenth-century American manufacturers in older industries. This innovative drive, coupled with a strategy of patent defense and control, carried the firm to the top of the cotton textile machine industry by the end of the century. The company's 1907 decision to follow a less innovative path seemed sensible in light of its secure position in a volatile market, but the costs in long-term competitive strength were high.