We study how firms allocate resources across their constituent establishments in response to local economic shocks in the context of the Great Depression. Using establishment-level data from the Census of Manufactures, we find that establishments in multi-plant firms are affected by local shocks in the regions in which the other establishments comprising the firm are located. In particular, establishment employment is positively affected by positive shocks to the local supply of credit to other establishments that make up the firm. Our results show the important role of firms in the geographic propagation of local economic shocks.

It has long been recognized that legal documents are invaluable for understanding the growth of pre-university teaching across fifteenth- and sixteenth-century England; when surveyed as a whole, they allow the general spread of schooling to be mapped with precision. However, smaller, more scattered legal proceedings involving teachers can be no less suggestive. Late medieval and early modern masters submitted legal pleas on a range of issues, and found themselves accused of a striking array of crimes, including murder, assault, fraud, incompetence, theft, adultery, and even high treason. Such episodes have more than anecdotal value—they throw into relief many of the conditions in which teachers of the period operated. In particular, they provide clear insight into the economic realities of medieval and early modern teaching, showing the pressures, rivalries, and anxieties that overshadowed the lives of masters, and demonstrating that instruction was not staged in a social or political vacuum.

‘Us and Them’ is a community history project and artistic collaboration exploring physical and intellectual disability and mental illness, in the past and present. It is part of a broader initiative to open out wider conversations about the history of psychiatric care in Epsom (Surrey, UK) and to explore ways in which medical histories, creative engagement strategies and oral history praxis can illuminate the instability of contemporary understandings of ‘healthy minds’ and ‘normative bodies’. This article charts our recent reuse of asylum photography and the restaging of wet-plate collodion portrait making, opening out key ethical questions about our complicity as consumers of historical sources, the role of re-enactment and empathy, and the place of the haptic and the ludic in exposing the porous and precarious boundaries between ableism and disability. Exploring our own vulnerabilities and solidarities in co-producing a public history project with our disabled artist collaborators, it offers insight into our evolving ‘micro ethics’, foregrounds lived experience perspectives, and offers some initial thoughts on ways to rethink critically some core tenets of oral history methodology.

The objective of this study is to analyze the debate surrounding the transformation of the Bank of Brazil into a central bank in 1923. The article seeks to answer the question: What was the role of a central bank for Brazilian policymakers at that time? Unlike other Latin American countries that established their central banks during this period, Brazil’s institution was not the result of any foreign mission. While central banks in other countries were primarily concerned with maintaining the gold standard, in Brazil, the main impetus for establishing a central bank was the need to address cash shortages and expand credit, rather than focusing on monetary discipline. Advocates for the creation of a central bank in Brazil were inspired by the model of Germany’s Reichsbank, and part of their theoretical influence came from the German Historical School. Other references cited in the debates included the works of Keynes and Cassel, and the participants of the debate made parallels with other sciences, such as comparing the central bank to elements of mechanical physics. Beyond controlling the money supply, the central bank was seen as an element for the economic development of the country, and there was an emphasis on the bank’s private management.

The women who have participated in memory-building projects in Colombia have shaped the formation of collective memory in important ways in official and informal projects. They have emphasized and highlighted their gendered experiences of the Colombian conflict and gained valuable experience working with and inside organizations. These experiences have provided women with a sense of feminist empowerment. The case of Medellín is particularly interesting because the city’s women have been engaged in constructing collective memory for decades, long before the ratification of the 2016 Peace Accord. As such, these women had a valuable skill set that they were able to employ in collaboration with the official transitional justice mechanisms supported by the state after 2016. The experience of having their voices recognized and acknowledged has raised the feminist consciousness of the women of Medellín involved with these projects. The Medellín case is somewhat distinct from other Latin American cases of women peace and human rights activists because Colombian women have had several decades to learn the importance of including and even centering their intersectional gendered perspectives. The women of Medellín are not unique among Latin American women, but they have had a significant head start.

This article examines the ways in which sexual and reproductive health themes appear in the Birmingham Black Oral History Project. As a community Black oral history project, it did not set out to collect memories of sexual or reproductive health. Despite that, the collection offers rich insights into the underexplored place of sexual and reproductive health within Black British histories. The article argues that archived oral history interviews should be “reused” as part of that historiographical exploration. It analyses the ways in which dominant interest in questions of “illegitimacy”—interest that had colonial roots—led to memories of sex education, courtship, and access to abortion in mid-twentieth-century Jamaica. Through a case study analysis of one interviewee—Carlton Duncan, father to the first “Black test tube twins”—the article concludes by arguing that being attentive to interviewee composure makes more visible the availability of narratives and cultural discourses through which interviewees could narrate or shape their sexual and reproductive health histories. As a whole, the article offers a new lens on postcolonial British history by analyzing the racist stereotyping that endured across the postwar period, especially in relation to Black sexuality and fertility.

Este ensayo revisa las siguientes películas:

La conquista de las ruinas. Dir. Eduardo Gómez. Prod. Ariel Soto, Facundo Escudero Salinas y Nicolás Munzel Camaño. Bolivia, 2020. 88 mins. Disponible en Boliviacine.com.

Algo quema. Dir. Mauricio Alfredo Ovando. Prod. Juan Álvarez Durán. Bolivia, 2018. 77 mins. Disponible en Boliviacine.com.

La bala no mata. Dir. Gabriela Paz. Prod. Catalina Razzini Zambrana. Bolivia, 2012. 57 mins. Disponible en Boliviacine.com.

My Bolivia, Remembering What I Never Knew. Dir. Rick Tejada-Flores. Prod. Rick Tejada-Flores. United States, 2017. 56 mins. Disponible en DVD.