• Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage
• Publications close
• The Business History Review close
• Language Learning close

This study analyzes the long-term power of mercantilist firms and brands in industries characterized by high uncertainty and asset specificity. It contrasts the reputation-building and protection strategies employed in two similar industries in Portugal in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; namely, those of Madeira and Port wine. The Portuguese crown created a collective brand for Port in 1756, the first regional appellation in the world. Madeira wine only received similar protection in the late twentieth century. This study argues that the Madeira wine industry relied on a different type of mercantilist proto-brand—a diffuse and multi-faceted “global” umbrella brand—of the British East India Company, which during its heyday more than rivaled the power of the Portuguese state as a product certifier and endorser.

Few phrases in the discourse of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have proven as durable and pliable as “seeking truth from facts.” The phrase was first used by Mao Zedong in the 1930s as a way to legitimate the CCP's departure from Stalinist direction, and it was later mobilized by Deng Xiaoping to signal a shift from Maoism toward new avenues of policy experimentation. In recent years, as rising tensions in the US-China relationship have produced a burgeoning literature that seeks to understand and interpret Beijing's intentions for a Western audience, the phrase has become as applicable to the study of China as it has long been to the governance of China. This is not merely because the People's Republic of China (PRC) provides an endless source of raw material for speculation and analysis, obscured behind a veil of obfuscation, censorship, and propaganda constructed by the world's largest and most powerful political party. It is also because the stakes of the debate—coming at a time when the role of the West in general, and the United States in particular, has been thrown into doubt by social division, political dysfunction, and economic decline—seem to provide grounds for doubting the motives of anyone who aspires to take a stand on such a crucial yet ambiguous question as the true nature of CCP rule. With so many facts to choose from, how are we to know which will produce the right truths, and more importantly, who is doing the choosing and why?

Recent debates on the economic history of the United States and other regions have revisited the question of the extent to which slavery and other forms of labor coercion contributed to the development of economic and political institutions. This article aims to bring Africa into this global debate, examining the contributions of slavery and coercion to periods of economic growth during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It argues that the coercion of labor in a variety of forms was a key part of African political economy, and thus when presented with opportunities for growth, elites turned first to the expansion of coerced labor. However, while labor coercion could help facilitate short-run growth, it also made the transition to sustained growth more difficult.