New book out on Security and Risk in economic and business history; Stephanie had opinions on the AOM relocation to Vienna in the FT; and this week, the University of Geneva hosts a fascinating workshop on the political economy of global and imperial activities beyond the well-known thinkers. With a bit more notice, we have an announcement of a forthcoming Hagley workshop, and we close with a new Hagley History Hangout on “Postindustrial Heritagization” with international cases. Enjoy!
New book on Security and Risk by Huber, Kleinöder & Kleinschmidt
FT covers AOM move to Europe, and quotes Stephanie (!)
Geneva business history workshop, Switzerland
Advertising and Marketing workshop at Hagley Museum and Library, Delaware, US
History Hangout: Conversation with Julia Silva de Medeiros
Challenges for Economy and Business in the Global 20th Century Edited by Marie Huber, Nina Kleinöder, and Christian Kleinschmidt (Nomos, 2026, open access)
This volume addresses the relationship between security and risk in economic and business history, with a distinctive analytical move: rather than foregrounding entrepreneurial risk-taking as the default driver of economic action, it centres security-seeking — the preventive measures, cautious corporate strategies, public demands for protection, and the deliberate avoidance of actions deemed too risky.
The book concludes a 12-year interdisciplinary research project within the Collaborative Research Center “Dynamics of Security: Forms of Securitization in Historical Perspective” at Philipps-Universität Marburg, funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. Drawing on the CRC’s analytical framework of situations (what gets identified as a security problem), heuristics (how it is interpreted), and repertoires (what strategies are developed in response), the volume tests whether constructivist approaches from critical security studies can be productively applied to non-state actors — particularly corporations and business associations.
The result is an interdisciplinary collection spanning business history (Kleinöder, Marx), economic history (Kleinschmidt, Huber), financial sociology (Salzer, Langenohl), Eastern European history (Sahling), and global history (Afoumba, Schwertner). Some contributions work closely with the CRC’s securitisation terminology; others foreground risk management in the Knightian tradition. Together, they demonstrate that securitisation processes in the economic sphere almost always involve both state and business actors, and that the focus on security reveals dimensions of corporate decision-making — the risks not taken, the stability measures pursued — that risk-centred approaches alone tend to miss.
Link to interview with editors.
TOC is after video
Security and Risk: Challenges for Economy and Business in the Global 20th Century Edited by Marie Huber, Nina Kleinöder & Christian Kleinschmidt Nomos, Baden-Baden 2026 | Series: Economic and Social History of Modern Europe, Vol. 11
Preface (pp. 1–6)
Security and Risk: The Case of Foreign Trade Securitisation (pp. 7–26) Marie Huber, Nina Kleinöder & Christian Kleinschmidt
Balancing Waters, Negotiating Risks: Economic Growth, Environmental Protection and Water Governance in Industrial Germany (pp. 27–50) Anna Corsten
Security and Risk in Colonial Contexts: The Enterprise–Security Nexus in the Construction of the Swakopmund Jetty, c. 1911–1920 (pp. 51–88) Nina Kleinöder
Sovereign Numbers: The Chinese Tariff and Economic Expertise in the 1910s and 1920s (pp. 89–112) Tim Salzer
The Securitisation of Transactions after Financial Crashes: The Case of Black Thursday, 1929 (pp. 113–132) Andreas Langenohl
Energy Security and Securitisation in the Federal Republic of Germany: Between Reconstruction and the Oil Crisis (1945–1973) (pp. 133–166) Christian Kleinschmidt
Europe as a Lifeline: The Rubber Industry in Times of Insecurity after the Second World War (pp. 167–194) Tonio Schwertner
Navigating Transition: The Contractualisation of British Economic Relations to Cameroon amid Independence (pp. 195–216) Dolly Afoumba
Securitising Development: The “AG Entwicklungsländer” of the BDI 1960–1975 and how German Business Lobbying Transformed Investment Risks into Economic Security Policy (pp. 217–250) Marie Huber
The Risk of Foreign Direct Investment: Multinationals of the West German Chemical Industry in the 1970s and 1980s (pp. 251–284) Christian Marx
Cheap Oil in Old Pipelines: Tracing German–Russian Oil Connections from the Cold War Division to Energy Sanctions (pp. 285–318) Cornelia Sahling
Author Information (pp. 319–321)
More info: https://www.nomos-shop.de/en/p/security-and-risk-gr-978-3-7560-3577-9
Download free copy
And I get quoted at quite some length, too!
Prof Stephanie Decker at Birmingham Business School told the FT that she would not attend this year and the cancellation of Seattle was “a bit of a bombshell”. She said: “It feels sometimes quite personally painful seeing what’s going on [in the US] right now. Canadian colleagues have said they are absolutely not going to the US for as long as there is a very aggressive posture towards Canada. There’s a sense of almost a patriotic duty not to go. With Europeans, maybe some people are worried, and there have been some immigration issues.”
Political economy beyond political economists: understanding political economy in action (1700-1840)
Between the end of the XVIIth century and the middle of the XIXth century, mounting interimperial rivalries and major economic changes (i.e., the industrial revolution) intertwined with a growing formalization of scientific knowledge and, more specifically, the emergence of political economy.
In 1776, Adam Smith famously characterised political economy as “a branch of the science of a statesman or legislator” that aims “to enrich both the people and the sovereign”. However, the role of economists and the subject of their study were still very much undefined at the time. On the one hand, economics as a distinct academic discipline had yet to emerge, and the boundaries with other fields of knowledge such as moral philosophy, natural sciences, or political theology were unclear. On the other hand, discussions of provocative ideas about the origins of wealth, the regulation of markets and freedom of trade were not restricted to closed intellectual circles.
Even though most of early economic debate took place beyond elite intellectual and political spheres, this significant yet elusive portion of economic thinking has largely escaped the attention of conventional histories of political economy. It is only in recent years that a growing stream of research has examined the emergence of economic discourse beyond the scope of prominent figures who came to define the trajectories of modern economic debates.
Link to full programme and further information.
A Conference at the Hagley Library, Wilmington Delaware
Friday, November 6, 2026
This conference will explore the networks of creative and intellectual labor in American advertising and marketing, broadly defined, from the colonial period through the twentieth century. We seek papers that identify and explain the nodes of production and intellectual labor that crafted persuasive communication in these fields. The conference aims to understand the variety of creators and producers who contributed to persuasion in American commerce and their connections to advertising agencies. We ask: In what ways did these hidden networks of persuasion shape American business and culture?
While much scholarship focuses on advertisements as artifacts, the people who contributed the intellectual and creative labor to produce such artifacts have often remained invisible. Many of these practitioners circulated among the overlapping fields of advertising, marketing, merchandising, promotion, and public relations even while building careers in creative fields such as art, literature, film, or music. Some also shifted their professional activities from these fields to marketing and advertising firms – and vice versa.
We are particularly interested in papers that explore the interactions between various nodes in the networks of advertising production such as:
How did these networks of persuasion function and how did they overlap?
What were the geographical and social spaces of creative production that brought creators together (e.g. particular cities, neighborhoods, buildings, cafes, and the like)?
In what ways did advertising and promotional work help subsidize creative careers?
What were the interactions of such individuals with agency professionals and their clients?
How did people in these networks interact with each other, and / or circulate in related fields?
In what ways did these networks shape the evolution of advertising, marketing, and promotion in American business and culture?
Alternatively, papers might consider the intellectual and creative labor contributed by specific individuals or professions, including but not limited to:
Printers, lithographers, typesetters, and related technicians
Playwrights, professional authors, journalists, and literary professionals (e.g., magazine editors)
Musicians, composers
Photographers, illustrators, painters, graphic designers, filmmakers, and other artists
Interior designers, window-display creators, industrial designers, set designers, fashion designers, and merchandisers
Market researchers, management theorists, psychologists, and sociologists
Business leaders, entrepreneurs, inventors
Key innovators or innovations that laid the groundwork for aesthetic or strategic changes in advertising practices
How outside creative and intellectual labor was valued (whether underpaid or overpaid) in advertising and marketing
Please submit proposals of no more than 500 words and a one-page C.V. to Carol Lockman at clockman@Hagley.org by June 1, 2026. Conference presenters will be asked to submit complete versions of their conference papers by Sept 26, 2026. The conference is planned as an in-person event but will adopt a virtual format if necessary. Presenters will receive lodging in the conference hotel and compensation for their travel costs. The program committee includes Jennifer Black, Cynthia Meyers, Greg Hargreaves, and Roger Horowitz.
History Hangout: Conversation with Julia Silva de Medeiros
What happens when industrial towns lose their defining industries? How do the remaining communities and infrastructures find meaning and a future among the postindustrial remains? The key often lies in heritagization, the process by which certain aspects of the past are identified, preserved, and presented as heritage.
In her dissertation research, Julia Silva de Medeiros, associate researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Geoanthropology, compares the postindustrial heritagization processes in Serra do Navio, Brazil and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, both of which once had major metallurgical industries, mining manganese and making steel respectively. Silva de Medeiros shows that the values prevailing among decision makers get embedded in the heritage passed down to future generations.
In support of her work, Silva de Medeiros received funding from the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library.
The audio-only version of this program is available on our podcast.
