Book Reviews: Le Touage: Histoire et technique, Leading the Way: A History of Lancashire's Roads, the Railway Revolution, Railways and the Victorian Imagination, American Railroads of the Nineteenth Century: A Pictorial History in Victorian Wood engravings, the St. Paul & Pacific Railroad: An empire in the Making, 1862–1879, Die Eisenbahn in Deutschland. Von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart, Subway City: Riding the Trains, the Malbone Street Wreck, the Atlantic, St Peter Port, 1680–1830, the British Motor Industry, 1945–1994: A Case Study in Industrial Decline, the Motor Car and Popular Culture in the Twentieth Century, Edinburgh's Transport: The Corporation Years, Raleigh and the British Bicycle Industry: An Economic and Business History, 1870–1960, Paddington Station 1833–1854, the Eleven Towns Railway: The Story of the Manchester & Leeds Main Line

This book reviews the role of British Foreign Secretaries in the formulation of British policy towards Japan from the re-opening of Japan in the middle of the nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth century. It also takes a critical look at the history of British relations with Japan over these years. Beginning with Lord John Russell (Foreign Secretary 1859-1865) and concluding with Geoffrey Howe (Secretary of State for Foreign & Commonwealth Affairs, 1983-1989), the volume also examines the critical roles of two British Prime Ministers in the latter part of the twentieth century, Edward Heath and Margaret Thatcher, who ensured that Britain recognized both the reality and the opportunities for Britain resulting from the Japanese economic and industrial phenomenon. Heath’s main emphasis was on opening the Japanese market to British exports. Thatcher’s was on Japanese investment. This volume is a valuable addition to the Japan Society’s series devoted to aspects of Anglo-Japanese relations which includes ten volumes of Britain & Japan: Biographical Portraits as well as British Envoys in Japan.

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THE LABOUR PARTY AND THE IMPROVEMENT OF MINDS: THE CASE OF TONY CROSLAND

The Historical Journal ◽

10.1017/s0018246x0200287x ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 46 (1) ◽

pp. 133-153 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

JEREMY NUTTALL

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

Labour Party ◽

Emotional Experiences ◽

Broad Concept ◽

British Labour ◽

History Of ◽

Ability And Willingness

This article uses the broad concept of ‘improvement of minds’ to refer to the idea of improving people's sense of morality, their ability and willingness to reason, and the depth of their emotional experiences. Such an objective has been little explored in the context of the history of the British Labour party. Yet, discussion of it is worth integrating into histories of the party for two reasons. First, the goal of improving minds was a strand – though often unsystematically developed – in the agendas of many Labour party politicians, activists, and thinkers. Secondly, the very fact that it was an unsystematically developed strand, the very limits of the party's attention to, and success in achieving, ‘mental progress’ amongst the twentieth-century British population – that is to say, simply, the limits to the party's pursuit and achievement of the objective of making people more caring, rational, and sensitive – is one important explanation for many of Labour's failures. The article begins to explore the aims, processes, and outcomes of Labour's attempts to improve minds, as well as to explain and examine the consequences of the limits of the party's attention to this goal, through the case study of Tony Crosland.

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The Emergence of an Export Cluster: Traders and Palm Oil in Early Twentieth-Century Southeast Asia

Enterprise & Society ◽

10.1017/eso.2017.10 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 19 (2) ◽

pp. 272-308 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

VALERIA GIACOMIN

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

Southeast Asia ◽

Palm Oil ◽

Current Literature ◽

Institutional Environment ◽

Business History ◽

The World ◽

History Of ◽

International Trading ◽

Cluster 2

Malaysia and Indonesia account for 90 percent of global exports of palm oil, forming one of the largest agricultural clusters in the world. This article uses archival sources to trace how this cluster emerged from the rubber business in the era of British and Dutch colonialism. Specifically, the rise of palm oil in this region was due to three interrelated factors: (1) the institutional environment of the existing rubber cluster; (2) an established community of foreign traders; and (3) a trading hub in Singapore that offered a multitude of advanced services. This analysis stresses the historical dimension of clusters, which has been neglected in the previous management and strategy works, by connecting cluster emergence to the business history of trading firms. The article also extends the current literature on cluster emergence by showing that the rise of this cluster occurred parallel, and intimately related, to the product specialization within international trading houses.

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“The Hora Staccato in Swing!”: Jascha Heifetz's Musical Eclecticism and the Adaptation of Violin Miniatures

Journal of the Society for American Music ◽

10.1017/s175219631200034x ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 6 (4) ◽

pp. 405-431

Author(s):

JOSHUA S. WALDEN

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

New York ◽

Twentieth Century ◽

Eastern Europe ◽

The United States ◽

Popular Song ◽

Tin Pan Alley ◽

Popular Songs ◽

History Of

AbstractJascha Heifetz (1901–87) promoted a modern brand of musical eclecticism, recording, performing, and editing adaptations of folk and popular songs while remaining dedicated to the standard violin repertoire and the compositions of his contemporaries. This essay examines the complex influences of his displacement from Eastern Europe and assimilation to the culture of the United States on both the hybridity of his repertoire and the critical reception he received in his new home. It takes as its case study Heifetz's composition of the virtuosic showpiece “Hora Staccato,” based on a Romany violin performance he heard in Bucharest, and his later adaptation of the music into an American swing hit he titled “Hora Swing-cato.” Finally, the essay turns to the field of popular song to consider how two of the works Heifetz performed most frequently were adapted for New York Yiddish radio as Tin Pan Alley–style songs whose lyrics narrate the early twentieth-century immigrant experience. The performance and arrangement history of many of Heifetz's miniatures reveals the multivalent ways in which works in his repertoire, and for some listeners Heifetz himself, were reinterpreted, adapted, and assimilated into American culture.

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Working in Hollywood

10.5149/northcarolina/9781469636504.001.0001 ◽

2018 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Ronny Regev

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

Popular Culture ◽

Film Industry ◽

Industrial Capitalism ◽

Hollywood Film ◽

New Class ◽

Modern System ◽

History Of ◽

New Form ◽

Anita Loos

A history of the Hollywood film industry as a modern system of labor, this book reveals an important untold story of an influential twentieth-century workplace. Ronny Regev argues that the Hollywood studio system institutionalized creative labor by systemizing and standardizing the work of actors, directors, writers, and cinematographers, meshing artistic sensibilities with the efficiency-minded rationale of industrial capitalism. The employees of the studios emerged as a new class: they were wage laborers with enormous salaries, artists subjected to budgets and supervision, stars bound by contracts. As such, these workers—people like Clark Gable, Katharine Hepburn, and Anita Loos—were the outliers in the American workforce, an extraordinary working class. Through extensive use of oral histories, personal correspondence, studio archives, and the papers of leading Hollywood luminaries as well as their less-known contemporaries, Regev demonstrates that, as part of their contribution to popular culture, Hollywood studios such as Paramount, Warner Bros., and MGM cultivated a new form of labor, one that made work seem like fantasy.

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