The articles in this issue of Business History Review contribute to major themes of this journal, especially the history of political economy and the role of business in environmental history. Ann-Kristin Bergquist, Magnus Lindmark, and Nadezda Petrusenko examine innovations in the growing recycling and waste management industries in Sweden following the passage of the 1969 Environmental Protection Act. Matthew Lowenstein and Shuji Cao reconstruct the accounting practices of a salt trading firm, the Fengshengtai Company, in the mid-nineteenth century, to show how Shanxi Province merchants developed an innovative form of double-entry bookkeeping original to China. Victor Gwande recovers the diplomatic and policy history of US investment in the short-lived Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (present-day Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Malawi) to reveal the conflicting positions US firms and the US government took on African nationalism and white minority rule. In addition, Robert Yee analyzes how the 1934 Reich Banking Law in Germany, which was instrumental in constructing the country's unique national banking system, emerged from longstanding national security debates about illiquidity and vulnerability to foreign economic crises.
The issue also features three review essays. Jeremy Friedman, in examining two recent works on China, one by Christopher Marquis and Kunyuan Qiao, and another by Stephen Roach, considers the continuing legacy of Maoism in China, and whether misguided narratives are deepening conflict between the US and China. Marc Levinson evaluates the usefulness of separating the forms of late-twentieth-century global capitalism into two categories, “liberal capitalism” and “political capitalism,” in his review of three global histories by Branko Milanović, Jonathan Sperber, and Sara Lorenzini. Finally, Richard Tedlow explores the demise of General Electric and the changing legacy of its former CEO, Jack Welch, in his review of two new books, one by Thomas Gryta and Ted Mann, and the other by David Gelles.
