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Over the Counter: Issue No. 39

Some notes on items of interest from around the Web:
JSTOR Daily is a site that presents short essays on topics derived from journal articles in its database. Some recent examples relevant to business historians:
"How Consumerism Sold Democracy to Postwar Germany"
"How 17th-Century Unmarried Women Helped Shape Capitalism"
"Madeira, the Island That Helped Invent Capitalism"
"Sex and the Supermarket"

Diana Heredia López’s exhibit using the Florentine Codex, "Of Merchants and Nature," focuses on Nahua agave, cotton, figs, and gourds and the fabrics and containers they engendered,

The History Channel cites George Robb's Ladies of the Ticker (University of Illinois Press, 2017) in a brief article titled "Decades Before They Had the Vote, Women Launched Their Own Stock Exchange" 

Unhappy news for business historians in the wake of last fall's Santa Rosa fires: More than 100 boxes of writings, correspondence, speeches and other items of William Hewlett and David Packard were completely lost when the building that contained them burned to the ground at Keysight Technologies. Keysight traces its roots to HP and acquired the archives in 2014 when its business was split from Agilent Technologies.

Sexing History is a podcast exploring how the history of sexuality shapes our present; it is co-hosted by Gillian Frank and Lauren Gutterman with production and editing by Rebecca Davis. Several episodes deal with the history of sexuality in business situations, including one on flight attendants and another on the Mark Eden "bust developer" business.

"Before Economics" is a podcast series about the history of political economy. The host is Ryan Walter, senior lecturer in political economy at the University of Queensland. The index of podcasts to date is here.

The National Railway Museum in York, UK, has a web exhibit on the history of railway safety since 1913. The material is based on the research of Mike Esbester, who writes about how he grew interested in the topic on the museum's blog.

The full conference on "The Rise of the Newspaper in Europe and America, 1600-1900," held at the Huntington Library last October, is available as a podcast on Soundcloud. (The print program is available here.)

Shane Hamilton has an essay on "Why Supermarket Power Matters" on the "Processed Foods" blog.

Roger Horowitz is the 2018 recipient of the Pogue Award from OHMAR (Oral History n the Mid-Atlantic Region) for his "outstanding and continuing contributions to oral history."

The "Merchant Fleet of Late Medieval and Tudor England, 1400-1580" database contains the details of English, Welsh, and Channel Islands merchant ships, and the voyages they undertook, between 1400 and 1580. The database was compiled using evidence from customs accounts, naval records, and ship surveys.

George Mason University has made available the program for the recent conference celebrating "The Life and Legacy of Douglass North."

Interesting website (in French): "Des Femmes qui Comptent" (About Women Who Count). This is a blog (and accompanying Twitter and Facebook accounts), done in partnership with BNP Paribas, that explores the history of women's working lives and rights through documents and testimony of those in the banking and financial sector.

At the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, a "Map of of the original grants of village lots from the Dutch West India Company to the inhabitants of New-Amsterdam." This cadastral map shows property lots with dimensions, names of owners, and year of grant (1642-1658).

From Vincent Geloso at the libertarian blog "Notes on Liberty," a list (with commentary) of "The Best Economic History Papers of 2017."

The History of Finance Network aims to "facilitate an international and interdisciplinary exchange on financial history and the culture of finance." It posts news of scholarship, conferences, and other materials of interest to the community; it is currently looking for folks willing to write for its blog.

The New York Public Library has recently digitized the letterbooks of Collin MacGregor, a Scottish New York City merchant acting on behalf of Loyalist or British businessmen in Nova Scotia, Great Britain, and elsewhere in the late eighteenth century. Digital files are linked here.

Benjamin Waterhouse published an article on "Business and Protest Culture, 1960s-1980s" in the Spring 2017 issue of Financial History, the magazine of the Museum of American Finance.

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