Editor’s Introduction

The 48th annual meeting of the Business History Conference was held at the Hagley Museum and Library in Wilmington, Delaware, April 19–21, 2002. The program committee was chaired by David Sicilia and included Mark Mason, Mary O’Sullivan, and Jonathan Russ. Steven Usselman organized the dissertation session. The annual meeting is an occasion to recognize excellence in the field, and a number of awards were conferred at the conference banquet. The inaugural Business History Conference Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., recognizing his immense contributions to the field and to the organization. The Harold F. Williamson, Sr., Prize in Business History, awarded every two or three years to a mid-career scholar who has made significant contributions to the field, was presented jointly to Angel KwolekFolland and Richard R. John. The Herman E. Krooss Dissertation Prize, for the best dissertation presented at the meeting, was awarded to Jeffrey Hornstein. The Newcomen Article Award, for the best article published in the 2001 volume of Enterprise & Society, was awarded to Daryl Hafter, “Women in the Underground Business of Eighteenth-Century Lyon” 2 (March 2001): 11–40. The Hagley Prize in Business History, presented to the author of a book published within the past two years, was awarded jointly this year to Gerald Feldman, Allianz and the German Insurance Business, 1933–1945 (Cambridge University Press, 2001) and S. Jonathan Wiesen, West German Industry and the Challenge of the Nazi Past, 1945–1955 (University of North Carolina Press, 2001). This issue of the journal is in part a record of the annual conference. It contains the presidential address, summaries of the dissertations presented in the formal dissertation session, and abstracts of papers presented at the meeting. In addition, there are two very diverse papers accepted for publication through the normal submission process, as well as the book review section. Enjoy the issue.