One of the pioneers in the historical study of business and entrepreneurship recalls the origins of the two fields and suggests a synthesis as a basis for further research and analysis. The Editors and Dr. Cole welcome comments and discussion of these ideas.

It would be folly to defend the conception “Latin America” too strongly. In a large area of twenty-odd republics, diverse in geography, resources, and ideologies, and where personalismo has been both a national and individual creed, generalizations tend to crumble when wielded too forcibly. Yet there are common ties of hemisphere, colonial heritage, language, law, and, to some extent, experience. The history of “Latin America” and its constituents is a recognized field of endeavor and will always sustain further study.

In contrast to older views of the passive role of London houses in the American trade, the active influence of a leading English merchant on the business decision-making of his colonial counterparts emerges from this case study.

The role of the historian dealing with transportation is a curious one in that it has rarely, if ever, been defined. Part of the difficulty, perhaps, is inherent in the subject itself and in mankind's (not too broad a term) conception of it.

A neglected trade and its commodities are emphasized in Professor Lydon's consideration of the colonial merchants' search for profitable returns to England.

Professor Lemly explores the blind loyalty of a city to a river, describes the ambivalence that characterized the city's leaders when railroads offered an alternate means of inter-regional transporty and analyzes the eventual efforts of St. Louis to make the most of both river and rails.

In detailing the business practices of an important 19th-century retailer, Mr. Resseguie contributes new material to the history of marketing.

Seville was the first and, for most of the sixteenth century, the only European community permitted to trade directly with the New World. That members of her nobility, who were traditionally aloof from trade, were intimately involved testifies to the wealth to be gained and its revolutionary economic and social effects.

The organizational alternatives available to businessmen are often important in the channeling of economic growth, as shown in this historical study of the French experience.

Through examination of the procedural relations of British aircraft companies and the State, Professor Higham suggests broader hypotheses regarding the process of government-business interaction.

Just as the colonial trade created commercial elites in Spain, so, too, did businessmen rise to economic and social importance in the New World. In Central America, for example, the marketers of indigo played an especially significant role.

In coping with large-scale problems of management, the railroads had to devise new methods for mobilizing, controlling, and apportioning capital, for operating a widely dispersed plant, and for supervising thousands of specialized workers. In these activities, Professor Chandler argues, were created basic plans for the structural form of the modern American corporation.

The promotional, financial, and manufacturing enterprises of the Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Inc. are examined in this study of its most prosperous years.

The interaction of business and political goals and strategies is emphasized in this critique of a key state bank's role in national affairs of the 1830's.

As Spanish mercantilism sagged in the late eighteenth century, a host of “foreign” traders probed her colonies. This account of one North American group is illustrative of the process of change.

The railroad leader's conception of his role in business and society is the focus of this study of one of the nineteenth century's most articulate businessmen.

The contradictory and inconsistent history of the origin, interpretation, and enforcement of the “commodities clause” of the Hepburn Act of 1906 is the basis for this analysis of one aspect of government-business relations in the American transportation industry.

The uncertainties of predicting and mitigating social reactions to business innovation are amusingly demonstrated in this study of an early public-relations crisis.

The energy and interplay of Latin American and foreign businessmen in enduring the uncertainties of independence and the obstacles of nature are underscored in this example from the Colombian experience.

On the eve of the merger mania at the turn of the century, the reversal of the first two words in the name of the Shawmut National Bank made it the successor in a consolidation of ten national banks in Boston. Many of the characteristics of this consolidation are exceptions to common generalizations about corporations and control; mergers and motivations.