Where people face immature or contested political institutions – a characteristic of many less-developed countries – the lack of access to the ballot box may result in political violence. Terrorism, uprisings, and other forms of individual or collective action to shift power may result in damage, fatalities, and, above all, uncertainty about what is to happen next. How then do businesses respond to political violence? This paper argues that political violence can be an alternative way in which to understand business history in the absence of firm archives, creating less of a “rupture” in the history of a firm than a “structural break.” By triangulating around such events using stock prices and popular press, we can help scholars to establish the strategic responses of firms to political uncertainty.
This theoretical framework is developed using political violence in one country, Russia during the 19th century, to show the effect of such violence on firms and their environment. Using a unique database of political violence, coupled with archival and never-before-digitized data from 19th century Russian financial broadsheets, I demonstrate that we can see the effects of political violence in financial markets even where we cannot see it in (non-existent) business archives. Although Imperial Russia was a unique creature in terms of both the persistence of its political violence and in the long time series of its capital markets, it still acts as an exemplar of how episodes of political violence in the past can present an opportunity to explore business history within the uncertain and unstable context which governs less developed countries.