EH.N: CfP: XVth WEHC Panel on Foreign Minorities and Business Development in Latin America (19th and 20th centuries)

[oekonomie at gmail.com]

Call for Papers: Panel on "Foreign Minorities and Business Development
in Latin America (19th and 20th centuries)"
XVth World Economic History Congress
Utrecht, The Netherlands

The purpose of this symposium is to study, from different points of
view, foreign minorities' insertion in the labor market and their
role in the formation of the companies in Latin America. The
importance of foreign investments (particularly in mining, railroads
and petrol) in the economic development of countries such as Argentina,
Brazil, Peru or Mexico is known. Meanwhile, we ignore almost
everything about the firms created by emigrants in these and other
American countries which should be considered as "national firms" and
whose contribution to the economic development of these territories and
to the creation of a "managerial spirit" has not been already
balanced. We want to focus our attention on these small firms born in
Latin America and owned by emigrants, since we think that their study
could offer new explanations of the economic opportunities in
underdeveloped countries, the European migrations and the business
culture of Latin America in a historical perspective.
 
We call for papers that study the following topics
 1) Analysis of different cases of Latin American firms formed by
 European and Asian emigrants.
 2) Study of specific minorities (Spaniards, British, Portuguese,
 French, Italian, Greece, German) in each country and their productive
 specialization and companies in their hands.
 3) The continuity of the Iberian economic elites after the
 independence of Hispanic American countries and Brazil.
 4) The role of the "district economy" (the market by people who shared
 the same nationality) in the development of these firms.
 5) The role of institutions in their formation and survival, formal
 ones (Consulates, Chambers of Trades) and informal (solidarity,
 family, language, religion, national feeling).
 6) The national and genetic components of theses firms: differences
 between Mediterranean, Anglo-Saxon, German and Asian firms in those
 aspects that concern management, family implication, specialization.
 7) Small foreign firms and capital markets. Informal networks and financing.
 8) Foreign minorities and the relationships with political powers,
 both in America and in their countries of origin.
 9) The increasing importance of citizens born in U.S. in the creation
 of small firms in Latin America.
 10) The transference of technological knowledge and management "know
 how" from these firms.

Organizers:

Dr. Maria Eugenia Romero (Facultad de Economia. UNAM) meromero at servidor.unam.mx
Dr. Javier Moreno (Universidad de Valladolid, Espana) jmoreno at eco.uva.es