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Editors’ Note

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 April 2025

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Abstract

Type
Editorial
Copyright
© 2025 The President and Fellows of Harvard College

The articles in this issue address key journal themes, including the history of business and the environment. Kati Toivanen and Niklas Jensen-Eriksen’s article on the business models of “marginalized” enterprises in Finland’s recycling industry contributes to historical research on sustainability and political economy. The issue also considers the role of technological innovation in national economic growth. Yuan Jia-Zheng and Veronica Binda examine the top Chinese companies investing in European automakers during the late twentieth century. They reveal the importance of technology transfer and Chinese government support for private companies and state-owned enterprises to the country’s successful international investment strategies. Pablo Díaz-Morlán, Miguel Á. Sáez-García, and Riccardo Semeraro analyze Italy and Spain’s adoption of minimills as a more resilient approach to steel production amid economic uncertainty after World War II. Finally, two articles in this issue consider the history of politics and entrepreneurship among South Asian entrepreneurs. Atiya Hussain’s microhistory of the Bombay enterprises Mahindra & Mohammed and the Muhammadi Steamship Company demonstrates how Indian economic unity, rather than national partition, had been central to postwar business ideas. Alexander Persaud shows how the rise of Indian merchants in Trinidad differed from the migration of other Indian diaspora groups, especially in the social mobility of formerly indentured laborers who became merchants. The issue also includes a review essay of Chris Wickham’s The Donkey and the Boat: Reinterpreting the Mediterranean Economy, 950–1180, contributed by Robert Fredona and Sophus Reinert.