Alfred Reckendrees

Zur Funktion der Aktiengesellschaften in der frühen Industrialisierung

Abstract Based on a new dataset of Prussian joint stock companies founded before 1870 this article indicates that early German joint stock companies were concentrated in a few highly developed regions. After the region became Prussian in 1815 the Rhine Province with its favourable institutional environment due to the persistence of French law (Code de Commerce) hosted a very large part of the Prussian industrial joint stock companies. Qualitative analysis of early joint stock companies in the industrial district of Aachen shows that the new institution allowed for related diversification of industrial investments into new industries within the region and contributed to the regional diffusion of technology, management knowhow, and economic expertise.

Politik als produktive Kraft? Die „Gelsenberg-Affäre“ und die Krise des Flick-Konzerns (1931/32)

The “Gelsenberg-Affair” is one of the most famous German business scandals. In May 1932, Friedrich Flick and the German government placed a secret contract by which Flick sold the majority of the second largest steal company of the world, the so-called German Steeltrust, to the German government. The only purpose of this deal was the survival of Flick’s insolvent holdingcompany Charlottenhuette. Hence, it was correctly interpreted as an ‘impermissible transaction for the benefit of a person in need of rehabilitation’ (M. v. Schinckel). This article analyses the strategically contaminated force field that Flick established since the beginning of the 1920s in order to safeguard several of his high risk investments. A crucial part of his strategy was based on the enforcement of a (secret) financial participation of the German government. This strategic relationship was played successfully by Friedrich Flick; the political sphere advanced to a hidden, but open-handed market for new financial funds and for the security of high risk investments. Flick was literally able to mobilise politics as a “factor of production”. This successful strategy was the precondition for the deal with the German government in 1932 and for the salvation of his insolvent holding-company.

Towards debate and open conversation

The beginning of the 64th year of the Scandinavian Economic History Reviewmarks some changes in our editorial team. For 13 years Sverre Knutsen (BI Oslo) has been one of the co-editors of the journal; after a long tenure he is stepping down. We are grateful for his enduring engagement with the journal and initiatives he has started. One of the major decisions during his editorship concerned starting our fruitful collaboration with Taylor & Francis and professionalising the journal. In his first editorial Knutsen (2003) stated that his major aim was to focus on quality in improving the journal and we certainly will keep quality as a priority in the future as well. Our editorial secretary Janette Rawlings is likewise retiring. Since 2011 she has been key to modernising the journal by introducing an electronic submission platform which helped reduce manuscript turnover time by 50%; another important achievement was improving author communication, and many authors have profited from her meticulous editing work. We are grateful for all Janette Rawlings has done for the journal. While some people leave, others come to join us – and it is well known that change is important. We are more than happy that Camilla Brautaset (University of Bergen) is to join the editorial team as the new co-editor from Norway. She will add to the scope of the journal with her research expertise in the history of trade and shipping, and in business history. And she will bring new female energy to the editorial team. The secretariat of the journal will in the future be managed by Tiina Hemminki and Pasi Nevalainen (University of Jyväskylä). They both completed their doctorates in History in 2014: Hemminki (2014) analysed early nineteenth-century peasants’ lending and credit practices in Sweden and in Finland. Nevalainen (2014) concentrated on the privatisation process of the Finnish governmental Post and Telecommunications Department. Both will help with managing the journal, and they will contribute their research expertise and specific fields of interest. We have also changed the style of the journal. Starting with this issue in-text citations (APA) will be used. Further information and our guidelines can be found in the document ‘Instructions to authors’ on our website. Moreover, together with other Taylor & Francis journals we will follow the publisher’s suggestion for a new layout that reflects changes in readers’ demands and publishing. We hope that this new design will make the journal even more attractive to our readers. This first issue of Scandinavian Economic History Review 2016 features three articles, some book reviews, and a debate article by Deirdre McCloskey. We feel honoured that Deirdre McCloskey considered this journal as the place to publish her important contribution identifying liberty, dignity, and ideas as key factors in understanding the ‘Great Enrichment’ that has changed the world since the late eighteenth century. She challenges contributions by scholars such as Douglass North, John Wallis, and Barry Weingast, by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, by Joel Mokyr, or by Robert Allen and many existing assumptions on the causes of economic growth and making the modern world, including the role played by labour, capital, technology and (formal) institutions. The editors do not necessarily agree with all articles published in the journal, but we aim to publish more contributions like that by McCloskey, opening up space for engaged conversations. Today, economic, social, and business history journals all over the world seem to shy away from debate and controversy. Such debates about equality and inequality, equal access, or about the origins of economic development do indeed exist in our disciplines, but they have been confined to coffee tables at conferences and some panel discussions. We want to air these in our journals as well.

Scandinavian Economic History Review 2011–2014: A Report

Every four years a new team of editors takes over Scandinavian Economic History Review (SEHR) on behalf of the Scandinavian Society of Economic and Social History. We have edited the journal since 2011 (vol. 59 no. 2–vol. 63 no. 1) and we want to provide our readers with a brief overview of our work and express our gratitude to those who contributed to the development of the journal. SEHR publishes articles on economic, business and social history with a particular interest in the Nordic countries. It reflects contemporary research, thinking and debate in these fields, within Scandinavia and throughout the world. Our aim was to maintain the journal as a valuable and interesting publishing outlet for scholars all over the world and for readers worldwide. Our priorities were to reduce the manuscript turnover time and accelerate the speed of publication, to improve the visibility of the journal and the use of the articles and also sharpen its international profile. Finally, we wanted to make the journal ready for the ISI Journal Citation Report in the near future, a decision that has been postponed far too long. All in all, we are pleased with the results. A new review process (since 2011) and electronic submission system (since 2012) helped reduce turnaround time: on average, authors now get the decision on a new manuscript within eight weeks. All issues of SEHR and all articles dating back to 1952 are now available online (http:// www.tandfonline.com/toc/sehr20/current). We are glad to have received manuscripts from more than 20 countries; 45% of the submissions came from Nordic countries, 22% from Western Europe and UK, 12% from Southern Europe, 11% from North America, 5% from Eastern Europe and Russia, and 5% from South America and the Pacific Rim. Readers are equally distributed over the world (as measured by downloads) and the readership has grown substantially (see figure 1). In 2013, we initiated a discussion about the future structure of the editorial board. The rotation of the editorial team to another Nordic country every fourth year creates a challenge for continuity and much institutional knowledge disappears. The editorial board and the general meeting of the Scandinavian Society of Economic and Social History have thus decided on a new structure. From now on, SEHR will have four editors, one each from Finland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark, with one being the editor-in-chief; only the latter position will be subject to rotation every fourth year. We expect this to provide more continuity, and with the enlarged team, closer connections to both the Nordic and the international research communities. Additional decisions were to focus the book review section on Scandinavian research and to collect the reviews in one Scandinavian Economic History Review, 2015 Vol. 63, No. 1, 102–105, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03585522.2015.1011405

Economic History in Times of Transition

This issue coincides with my retirement as one of the (co-)editors of the Scandinavian Economic History Review. It has been a great pleasure and a real privilege to work for this journal over the last six years, and I am grateful that Jari Ojala, editor-in-chief since 2015, invited me to reflect upon the development of the Journal since 2011. After a few acknowledgements, I present a brief survey of strategic ideas that guided the editors and of some achievements of the last six years. Then I take the opportunity to indicate how in my view academic journals in our fields may become even more interesting (the short answer is ‘red’ – relevance, engagement, debate). And finally, I introduce to the articles appearing in this number of the Journal. A journal is teamwork. Many people, from the authors who submit their papers to the publisher’s copyeditors, contribute to the success of a journal. Most of all, I am grateful for the enjoyable collaboration with Jacob Weisdorf (we edited SEHR together for four years) and with Janette Rawlings who ran the secretariat and enabled us to focus mainly on content. Copenhagen Business School and the Department for Management, Politics, and Philosophy generously supported my term. Many thanks to Jari Ojala, who became the first editor-in-chief of this journal in 2015, and to the other co-editors with whom it was my pleasure to cooperate, Camilla Brautaset, Sverre Knutsen, Lars Magnusson, and Espen Storli. The engagement of the publishing team of Taylor & Francis was a pleasant experience: Victoria Babbit, ElisaBeth Alexis, and Calum Petrie were outstanding – it would be nice, though, if job turnover in the publishing industry were less frequent. Last but not least, without the support of our associate editors and the members of the advisory board, particularly Stephen Broadberry, Geoffrey Jones, Kevin O’Rourke, and Marco H.D. van Leeuwen, the journal would look different today; they helped in many ways.