New Books in Economic and Business History

In this interview I met with Dr. Juxuan Zhang (Osaka University) to discuss her research on the history of the Chinese apparel industry since 1979. Her paper with Prof Pierre-Yves Donzé (Osaka University) investigates the structural transformation of the Chinese apparel industry from 1980 to 2020. Following an approach of industry studies and classic business history, it focuses on the 10 largest apparel companies in the four decades since the 1980s. Drawn from a broad range of published sources and official data, it analyses the ownership transition and entrepreneurial strategies of these companies under the changing institutional context. The findings show how different types of firms were able to use regulations and policies to dominate the industry. The study contributes to literature by exhibiting the dynamics of the industry development from the perspective of companies and entrepreneurs.

Read the full research for free here

Presented by Paula de la Cruz-Fernández, Ph.D.
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British
daily newspapers transformed rapidly at the turn of the nineteenth
century, ballooning in size and radically reorganizing staffing and
production decade by decade. By mid-century, newspapers had grown from
the folded single sheets of the previous century to large multi-page
broadsheets, so impressive in the quantity of print they held and their
speed of production that one of their nicknames was 'the daily miracle'.

Traditional
news history has overlooked a key fact for understanding this era of
news: that Victorian daily newspapers were high-pressure systems. As
demand for newspapers outpaced their original production capacity,
newspaper organizations began to build complex technical and production
mechanisms to continue to grow and compete. As these systems expanded,
newspapers became dependent on them, and decisions about how daily
journalism should develop began to pass from editorial choice to
systemic necessity. The previously untold story of Victorian daily news
is that the personalities of editors and owners and the larger social
forces at work in that era were not the only (or even primary) drivers
of its history. Once set in motion, the systems of Victorian news gained
major shaping agency over their own development.

Combining deep archival research and traditional historical analysis with modern data mining methods, News Machines: The Systems of Daily Journalism in Britain, 1785–1885
(Oxford University Press, 2026) by Dr. Dallas Liddle reconstructs the
systemic workings of Victorian daily news in unprecedented detail,
offering new and counterintuitive accounts of when and why daily papers
expanded, how and why steam-powered printing machines developed, how
specialized news discourses evolved, and how newspaper leadership was
organized.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book
focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty
negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative
analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find
Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. 
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For two centuries, multinational enterprises (MNEs) have arrived in waves on Australia’s shores. Highly visible and influential household names among them – Ford, IBM, Kodak, Electrolux, ANZ – but also many smaller, lesser-known enterprises. Foreign MNEs in Australia today account for almost half of our top 2,000 firms and control over A$1.4 trillion of assets. There is much we do not understand about these important institutions, why they chose to invest here, how they entered, and why some firms survived for long periods, while others exited.

The history of MNEs, more than most topics, is inextricably connected to international experience. Across half a century of research, their history has emerged as a vibrant field of investigation in North America, Europe, and, increasingly, Asia. MNE activity in Australia, briefly referenced in some of these studies, formed an important part of the global presence of many firms. This is the first history of foreign MNEs in twentieth-century Australia, filling a major gap in the economic and business history literature of Australia and of the history of international business globally. It integrates the important and distinctive Australian experience with an extensive international and comparative scholarship on big business and MNEs.

Bibliographical reference to the interview's book: Ville, Simon, Pierre van der Eng, André Sammartino, David Merrett, and Monica Keneley. 2026. Global Enterprise in Australia: International Business Down Under since Federation. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003586272.

My interview with Prof Simon Ville about the first volume on the history of MNEs in Australia https://newbooksnetwork.com/in... Bibliographical reference: Ville, Simon, and David Merrett. 2022. International Business in Australia Before World War One Shaping a Multinational Economy. Palgrave. https://link.springer.com/book...

Presented by Paula de la Cruz Fernández, Ph.D.
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Between the late 1940s and the end of the twentieth century, natural gas became Iran's bedrock energy source. Billed as a futuristic fuel for a future world power, gas became an avenue for the country's developmentalist ambitions. The ability to build technologically sophisticated infrastructures served as a powerful tool of state legitimation, both before and after the 1979 Revolution, and tied top-down politics of modernization to bottom-up feelings of national belonging. Accelerant: Energy Infrastructures and the Natural World in Making Modern Iran (Stanford UP, 2026) analyzes the interwoven histories of energy, development, and the environment inIran. Following the movement of natural gas from underground deposits, through infrastructures of refining and distribution, and into everyday life, Ciruce Movahedi-Lankarani explores the roles of development planners, oil firms, industrialists, engineers, and consumers—as well as the mountain ranges, sedimentary rock, and natural gas itself—to show how natural gas emerged as a crucial enabler of industrialization and a strong impetus for resource nationalism. Tracing the transformation of gas from a waste product into a vital resource, this book offers a history of anticolonial developmentalism in Iran—revealing a key driver toward intensified energy use that suggests why and how societies in the Global South became voracious consumers of fossil fuel energy.

Ciruce Movahedi-Lankarani is the Farhang Foundation Early Career Chair in Iranian Studies and Assistant Professor of Middle East Studies and Environmental Studies at the University of Southern California.Filippo De Chirico is a Ph.D. Candidate in Energy History at Roma Tre University. His research focuses on the history of the Italian natural gas sector.
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Can publishing change the world? In Dispatches from the Avant-Garage: The Alternative Press Rebecca Kosick (Wayne State UP, 2026), an Associate Professor in Comparative Poetry and Poetics at the University of Bristol, tells the story of The Alternative Press. Beginning in Detroit in the late 1960s, initially based in the house of Ann and Ken Mikolowski, the press created a rich and eclectic set of artworks. The story of The Alternative Press is also the story of US art and radical politics from the 1970s into the 1990s, with lessons for art and politics today. Drawing on a huge amount of archival work, interviews, and visual reproductions to analyse both the form and content of The Alternative Press’s activity, the book will be essential reading for arts and humanities scholars, as well as for anyone interested in the history of radical art and culture in the USA.
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