A newly published issue of the scholarly journal Jewish Culture and History focuses on the intersection between the two research fields of business history and Jewish studies. Editors are Benito Peix Geldart, Maja Hultman and Anders Houltz.
As they point out in the introduction, the theme issue’s five articles discuss different expressions of Jewish entrepreneurship and economic activities in the rise of modern Europe. The authors examine the connections between Jewish entrepreneurship and local, national and European development and ask questions about how Europe’s relationship with Jews throughout history has affected the daily operations of companies and how entrepreneurship itself has in various contexts come to constitute a platform for cultural interaction between Jews and non-Jews. Jews.
As the articles show in various ways, entrepreneurship has not only been a way to earn a living and build wealth, but also played a role in social and cultural contexts – within the framework of economic transactions, integration and cooperation but also oppression and exclusion have at different times taken concrete expressions.
The theme issue is based on a paper that was presented at a two-day digital workshop on 24–25 November 2021, arranged in collaboration between the Center for Business History’s Research Secretariat and the Center for European Research at the University of Gothenburg.
The theme issue includes the following articles:
- “Introduction: Jews, Europe, and the Business of Culture” by Maja Hultman at the Centre for European Research, University of Gothenburg, and Benito Peix Geldart och Anders Houltz, both at the Centre for Business History in Stockholm.
- “The Great Jewish Transformation: The Marketplace and the Jewish Experience from Pre-Emancipation to the Post-Holocaust Period” by Gideon Reuveni, Weidenfeld Institute of Jewish Studies, University of Sussex.
- “Letters of Loss and Urgency: Jewish Refugee Industrialists, Business Networks and Pathways of Rescue” by Trisha Oakley Kessler, Woolf Institute, University of Cambridge.
- “The Amsterdam Diamond ‘Marketplace’ and the Jewish Experience” by Karin Hofmeester, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam and University of Antwerp.
- “Jewish Migration and the Development of the Swedish and Finnish Garment Industry” by Laura Ekholm, Political history, University of Helsinki.
- “Berlin Jews, Business, and Bourgeois Feminism 1890-1914: Commerce and the Making of a Cultural Moment?” by Angelina Palmén, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Oxford.
