Europe is the cradle of the modem international chemical industry. From the middle of the nineteenth century until the outbreak of World War I, the European chemical industry influenced not only the production and control of science and technology, but also made significant contributions towards economic development, as well as bringing about profound changes in working and living enviromnents. It is a highly complex heritage, both rich and threatening, that calls for close scrutinity. Fortunately, a unique opportunity to explore the historical development of the European chemical industry from a variety of novel standpoints, was made possible during 1993 as part of the European Science Foundation (ESF) programme called 'The Evolution of Chemistry in Europe, 1789-1939.' This process of exploration has taken place through three workshops, each dealing with different time periods. The workshop concerned with the period 1850-1914, which corresponds roughly to the so-called Second Industrial Revolution, was held in Maastricht, The Netherlands, on 23-25 March 1995. This volume is the outcome of that workshop. The other workshops dealing with European chemical industry were held in Liege in 1994, covering the First Industrial Revolution period, 1789-1850, and Strasbourg in 1996, covering the period between the two World Wars.

This monograph provides an account of how the synthetic nitrogen industry became the forerunner of the 20th-century chemical industry in Europe, the United States and Asia. Based on an earlier SpringerBrief by the same author, which focused on the period of World War I, it expands considerably on the international aspects of the development of the synthetic nitrogen industry in the decade and a half following the war, including the new technologies that rivalled the Haber-Bosch ammonia process. Travis describes the tremendous global impact of fixed nitrogen (as calcium cyanamide and ammonia), including the perceived strategic need for nitrogen (mainly for munitions), and, increasingly, its role in increasing crop yields, including in Italy under Mussolini, and in the Soviet Union under Stalin. The author also reviews the situation in Imperial Japan, including the earliest adoption of the Italian Casale ammonia process, from 1923, and the role of fixed nitrogen in the industrialization of colonial Korea from the late 1920s. Chemists, historians of science and technology, and those interested in world fertilizer production and the development of chemical industry during the first four decades of the twentieth century will find this book of considerable value.

The editors wish to thank the European Science Foundation for its support of the programme on the Evolution of Chemistry in Europe, 1789-1939, as well as for sponsoring the publication of this volume. Through the subdivision of this initiative that deals specifically with chemical industry it has been possible for historians of science, technology, business and economics to share often widely differing viewpoints and develop consensus across disciplinary and cultural boundaries. The contents of this volume are based on the third of three workshops that have considered the emergence of the modern European chemical industry prior to 1939, the first held in Liege (1994), the second in Maastricht (1995), and the third in Strasbourg (1996). All contributors and participants are thanked for their participation in often lively and informative debates. The generous hospitality of the European Science Foundation and its staff in Strasbourg is gratefully acknowledged. Introduction Emerging chemical knowledge and the development of chemical industry, and particularly the interaction between them, offer rich fields of study for the historian. This is reflected in the contents of the three workshops dealing with the emergence of chemical industry held under the aegis of the European Science Foundation's Evolution of Chemistry in Europe, 1789-1939, programme. The first workshop focused mainly on science for industry, 1789- 1850, and the second on the two-way traffic between science and industry, 1850-1914. The third workshop, dealing with the period 1900-1939, covers similar issues, but within different, and wider, contexts.

Scale and Scope is Alfred Chandler’s first major work since his Pulitzer Prize–winning The Visible Hand. Representing ten years of research into the history of the managerial business system, this book concentrates on patterns of growth and competitiveness in the United States, Germany, and Great Britain, tracing the evolution of large firms into multinational giants and orienting the late twentieth century’s most important developments. This edition includes the entire hardcover edition with the exception of the Appendix Tables.

This book is an unorthodox biography of William Hesketh Lever, 1st Lord Leverhulme (1851-1925), the founder of the Lever Brothers’ Sunlight Soap empire. Unlike previous biographies, which have focused on the man’s life story and eccentricities, or just considered one aspect of his career, So clean places him squarely in his social and cultural context and is fully informed by recent historical scholarship. Much more than a warts-and-all biography, the book uses Lever as an entry-point for contextualized and comparative essays on the history of advertising; on factory paternalism, town planning, the Garden City movement and their ramifications across the twentieth century; and on colonialism and forced labour in the Belgian Congo and the South Pacific. It concludes with a discussion of his extraordinary attempt, in his final years, to transform crofting and fishing in the Outer Hebrides. Written in an engaging and accessible style, So Clean will appeal to academics and students working in business, social, cultural and imperial history.