Abstract

" “Capitalism Turn” in American Business History since the mid-1990s"

Liuzhen Yu, Shaanxi Normal University (yuliuzhen@163.com)

When the field of American business history first appeared in the 1920s, capitalism was far from taken into accounted by business historians. It is not until 1960s that capitalism was first returned to the view of American business historians when Alfred D. Chandler published his influential work on American big business. But his understanding of capitalism was narrowly confined within the business itself, seriously downplayed the role of the state, politics, society more broadly. Over the past two decades, probably no subfield of analysis has seen as much growth and been as voguish in American historiography as the self-proclaimed “new history of capitalism”. Its impact on the traditional historical writing is so great that some historians described it as “blasting the door open with a grenade”. It has entailed a revitalization of both business and labor history, though its practitioners can be found in virtually any subfield. At the same time, a number of business historians participated and played a significant role in promoting the rise of the “new history of capitalism”.

This paper attempts to review the “capitalism turn” in American business history over the past two decades. It is divided into three parts. Firstly, it tries to briefly describe the emergence of the “new history of capitalism” in American historical writing and what the role business historians has played in the process. Secondly, it is to analysis some topics and themes in American business historians’ new research in the field of the history of capitalism. Finally, it is to discuss how business historians of capitalism changed our views on American history and American capitalism, and how the framework of the new history of capitalism could help American business historians to speculate about what the consequences of a more generalized use of the concept of capitalism would be.