The nations of East Asia share a common cultural heritage, but there is a marked difference in their adaptation to the modern world. During the past century Japan has been distinguished by enormous economic development, while China has experienced profound political turmoil. East Asian historiography reflects this trend. One can compile an outstanding bibliography on economic growth in Japan, and Japan's recent challenge to American business has prompted scholars to probe more subtly the business organization and managerial practices of that country. As for China, although there are numerous studies on political revolution, there are only a few studies on business history. This special issue of the Business History Review has helped to fill this gap in scholarship.

No American presidency in this century has inspired quite so much controversy as the turbulent administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Even now, on the one-hundreth anniversary of his birth, and nearly fifty years after the coming of the New Deal, the contentious debates sparked during his four terms as chief executive are no less the subject of argument among historians than they were among the adversaries of the day. One issue in point is the question of antitrust, particularly the principles and practices of Thurman Arnold, who headed the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department during the later stages of the New Deal. While this essay will hardly resolve the contumacious debates over the policies of either Arnold or Roosevelt, Dr. Miscamble nonetheless offers some surprising, but persuasive, evidence about the internal workings of the administration, the antitrust philosophy of Roosevelt, and the remarkable practices of Arnold, the law professor turned antimonopolist.

The fostering of worker confidence in the organization has been a major goal of big business for a century. Professor Nelson, a well-known authority on the history of human resource management, here provides a new look at company unions. His view shows that the characterization of these organizations by liberal and labor critics was not always accurate. Some company unions represented noteworthy contributions to the development of a professional approach to labor relations.

One of the leading experts on the history of multinational enterprise, Mira Wilkins here sets forth the history of American multinational investment in Japan and Japanese multinational investment in the United States during two crucial decades. The tumultuous years from 1930 to 1952 forced these companies to deal with the vastly different challenges of depression, war, and peace. Professor Wilkins explains how they adapted to their changing environment. She also provides noteworthy support for the view that cross-investment was not symmetrical.

In the 1920s, leaders of the lumber business tried to bring stability to their industry through vigorous trade association activity conducted with the encouragement of then Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover. Despite the optimism of association spokespeople and publicists, the hoped for stability was not attained because the associations were incapable of relieving the intra- and inter- industry competition lumbermen confronted. Nevertheless, the efforts of those involved threw into sharp relief attitudes in business and government about the nature of the political economy of the “New Era.”

Genstar Ltd. of Canada provides a superb case study of the relationship between the strategy a corporation chooses to pursue and the organizational form which it adopts. Genstar had originally operated as a holding company. But its managers came to understand that the advantages that form provided were outweighed by the problems it posed given both the general goals of Genstar's parent, the Société Générale de Belgique, and the particular opportunities and obstacles presented by the Canadian business environment since World War II. The result was the adoption of the multidivisional form.

The primary purpose of this essay is to review studies in Chinese and Japanese business history that have appeared during the last few decades, and above all to review those that are relevant to the articles in this special issue either directly or as an aid to understanding the general background. As far as the latter is concerned, works of economic rather than of business history need to be mentioned. Although these works exist in Chinese and Japanese as well as in western languages, in this article reference will be made only to works in western languages and, when unavoidable, to Japanese-language studies. There will also be comments on the articles forming this special issue.

The opening decades of the twentieth century saw various advertisers embark on a concerted effort to create professional instruction at American universities. They had two objectives. They thought that such instruction might help individual firms determine precisely how advertising worked in the marketplace — and thereby create a science of advertising — and they hoped that university education would transform their business into a full-fledged profession. Yet these efforts brought mixed results. As such instruction came into being, advertisers found that they had little influence over the education they had sought to promote, and they found that such training had chosen to follow one of two divergent paths, neither of which the industry thought wholly acceptable. Even more to their dismay, advertisers found that this education did not in fact convert their business into a profession.

The economic history of Latin America offers an unusual paradox. For much of the twentieth century, nationalist governments have fostered the growth of state enterprise, but for the most part the proponents of such policies have received little attention. The Argentine petroleum industry is a case in point. While the state oil company Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales (or YPF) grew from relatively modest origins into the largest firm in the country, its most important architect, General Enrique Mosconi, has remained a little-known figure. In this article, however, Dr. Solberg takes note of Mosconi's career. He examines the forces that shaped it and that shaped his policies as the Director General of YPF. Mosconi's story, however, is not that of just another nationalist-turned-public servant, for his ideas and policies had far-reaching ramifications not only in the political economy of Argentina but also in that of other nations of Latin America.

Mobilization for World War I carried the United States government into an unprecedented role in the American economy. Entire industries came under the regulation, if not outright control, of new federal boards and bureaucracies. Although this was a vast departure from American tradition, it was naturally justified by the exigencies of global warfare. Platinum was hardly a well-known commodity, but it was indeed a strategic metal that came into increasing demand as burgeoning military needs overwhelmed consumer uses. The result was that platinum gradually came under federal controls. Domestic supplies were limited, however, and as the war continued, worried federal officials looked abroad for additional sources in case of a prolonged conflict, a turn of events that subtly carried them far beyond the ken of domestic regulation. In this article professors Lael and Killen look in detail at the development of platinum controls. Aside from presenting a case study in the evolving relations between business, government, and international politics, they offer new insights into the philosophical assumptions and managerial skills of those who ostensibly masterminded the American economy during World War I.

The now-famous merger movement that highlighted the economic cross-currents of the late nineteenth century created no more controversial enterprise than James B. Duke's American Tobacco Company. From the time of its incorporation in 1890, Duke's firm dominated the cigarette business, for which it is so justly renowned, but this controlling position by no means extended into other branches of the industry, particularly the manufacture and marketing of chewing tobacco, or what was known as plug. Yet with almost ineluctable force, Duke and his associates gradually extended their domination to this segment of the business, albeit by a much more uncertain course that included the “plug war” of the mid-1890s and some questionable securities transactions later on. While Dr. Burns takes no side in the still-simmering controversies of the day, in this essay he examines the historical events through which American Tobacco acquired its dominant position in chewing tobacco; equally important, he brings economic theory and new empirical evidence to bear on the contentious issue of predatory pricing as a strategy of monopolization, and from that emerges his surprising conclusion.

Students of Japanese business development have long debated the question of what has been called “community-centered entrepreneurship.” Most often, the debate has involved two groups: one which has contended that Japanese businessmen put the public interest ahead of personal gain, and another which has argued that profits from private enterprise were so large that public interests could be served without imperiling private profits. In this article Professor Fruin examines the concept of community-centered entrepreneurship in terms of the Noda soy sauce industry as it evolved from the period of entrepreneurial capitalism of the nineteenth century to the managerial capitalism of the twentieth. While analyzing this important early industry in Japan within the context of ongoing institutional and ideological change, Fruin not only offers substantial evidence to support one side of the controversy surrounding community-centered entrepreneurship, but also draws some interesting parallels between the philanthropic endeavors of Japanese businessmen and their counterparts in the West during this era.

In studying the economic growth of Latin America, historians of widely divergent viewpoints have tended to emphasize the role of foreigners in the developmental process. As a result, they have often overlooked the efforts of Central and South American entrepreneurs in mobilizing capital and adopting technology to foster the growth of their countries. Chile is a case in point. Like their counterparts throughout Latin America, mid-nineteenth-century Chilean businessmen have been generally portrayed as the followers of foreign interests that dominated the nation's economy. This interpretation, however, has ignored the activity of Chileans in building railroads and promoting various other sectors of their economy. In this essay, Dr. Oppenheimer offers conclusive evidence that Chilean businessmen, closely linked to government—but not foreigners—dominated the two firms that brought the iron horse into Chile's Central Valley.

Although East Asia's silk trade with the West stretched far back into antiquity, the middle and later years of the nineteenth century witnessed a remarkable growth in the European and American demand for silk. This imparted a tremendous impetus to the Chinese and Japanese industries. For some eighty years, from the 1850s through the 1930s, trade flourished until the coming of synthetic fibers and world war curtailed its growth. The rise of so large an international business obviously had a significant impact on these countries, one that was particularly profound in the case of Japan. When the upsurge in trade began, both China and Japan were at roughly comparable stages in their economic development, but when the trade ended with the onset of war, it was Japan, not China, which had emerged as one of the leading industrial nations of the world. While few would contend that silk alone, however important, accounted for this differing course of national development, the dissimilar paths followed by the Chinese and Japanese silk industries not only reflected many themes characteristic of business enterprise in those countries but also typified their divergent national experience during this dramatic era of economic growth.

For much of the twentieth century, the petroleum industry of Peru was dominated by the International Petroleum Company (or IPC), a subsidiary of the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. Yet IPC never obtained a monopoly. Other firms, such as Lobitos Oilfields Limited, a concern founded by British merchants, produced a significant amount of Peru's output. In this article, Professor Miller examines Lobitos's development from the time of the company's founding in 1900 through the pivotal year of 1934. Although the fortunes of Lobitos were closely linked to the pertubations of the international market and the shifting policies of the Peruvian government, corporate management enjoyed an unusual flexibility not only because the firm's interests were sometimes identical with those of its powerful rival IPC, but also because its merchant founders had established a vast trading network throughout South America. These additional factors allowed Lobitos to survive as a relatively small, unintegrated independent in an age of giant, fully-integrated multinationals.

By the onset of the Great Depression, the big four tire manufacturers had long become the dominant force in the American rubber industry; yet they did not have a monopoly. A substantial number of smaller firms had managed to survive, however tenuously, although their decline had continued through the hard times of the 1920s and their plight grew worse with the onset of the Depression. Like their giant rivals, however, the small, unintegrated firms serving limited markets sought to survive at least in part through the help of new federal agencies as well as with the aid of traditional institutions. In this article, which analyzes the story of the McCreary Tire & Rubber Company, Professor Fricke presents a view of the economic crisis from the perspective of small enterprise. If the experience of this manufacturer can be generalized, as Fricke suggests, small business not only had a different attitude toward the expanded role of government but also emerged from the Depression changed in the ways that it did business, a result of its experience with the new federal agencies and the economic crisis itself.

Whatever economic growth and development took place in nineteenth-century China, it was by no means an expansion highlighted by a commercial and industrial revolution comparable to that which occurred in Great Britain, the United States, and Japan. While many factors accounted for these alternative paths of change, one element was clearly the differing organization of business enterprise. In this essay, Professor Chan examines the organizational structure of the traditional Chinese firm during the nineteenth century. Then he presents two case studies, one of which illustrates how an enterprise developed an innovative strategy of growth based upon traditional Chinese methods, and a second that illustrates how a company wedded western managerial practices to the Chinese model with spectacular results. While it would be dangerous to generalize about the entire Chinese managerial experience from such a limited number of firms, their successful, though divergent paths of development do indeed suggest the role that traditional Chinese organizational methods had in stifling modern development as well as the influence that western practices and techniques would have on China's growth in the early to middle years of the twentieth century.