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This paper considers Olive Banks' work on charting the history and development of British feminism, and particularly her use of collective biography as a research and analytic tool. It is argued that while this has been seen as the least 'fashionable' aspect of her work, it took forward C. Wright Mills' contention for one definition of sociology as the interaction between biography and history, and predated by a decade or so similar work on prosopography by Bourdieu from the 1990s onwards. More recently other sociologists and educationists have taken up this methodological approach, including Jane Martin and Bronwyn Davies and Susanne Gannon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on Evelyn Baring, the British pro-consul who spent 35 years of his career in India and Egypt from 1872 to 1907. Biography of Baring; Career of Baring as an ideological exponent of the liberal economic notions of free trade; Qualities of Baring as a diplomat.

When the first number of journal "Business History," appeared in 1958, the first words, fittingly, where those of economist T.S. Ashton. The great man did not attempt to justify the study of business history in terms of its contemporary relevance or the magnitude of its potential contribution to historical scholarship. It was enough for Ashton to observe that insufficient attention had been paid in the past to the accomplishments of businessmen, and to note that the intensive study of business records might yield much of value to the parent study of economic history, since it is in the individual firm, rather than in wider organizations, that people can observe the operation of economic forces at first hand. Ashton, of course, shared the view that held sway in Great Britain for so long, that business history was essentially a grass roots approach to economic history, virtually synonymous with company history and business biography. In 1990 business history in Great Britain has reached the stage of vigorous youth, if not maturity. It is a progressive and dynamic subject, full of opportunities. This journal looks forward to participating in the challenges and excitement, which await everybody in the forthcoming decade.