Merchant Princes: An Intimate History of Jewish Families Who Built Great Department Stores.

A bitter conflict between the Spanish and Ottoman empires dominated the second half of the sixteenth century. In this early modern “global” conflict, intelligence played a key role. The Duchy of Milan, home to Simon Sacerdoti (c.1540-1600), a Jew, had fallen to Spain. The fate that usually awaited Jews living on Spanish lands was expulsion—and there were signs to suggest that King Philip ii (1527-1598) might travel down that road. Sacerdoti, the scion of one of Milan’s wealthiest and best-connected Jewish families had access to secret information through various contacts in Italy and North-Africa. Such intelligence was highly valuable to Spanish forces, and Philip ii was personally interested in it. However, this required Sacerdoti to serve an empire—Spain—with a long history of harming the Jews, and to spy on the Ottomans, widely considered as the Jews’ supporters at the time. This article offers a reflection on Simon Sacerdoti’s story. Examining how a Jew became part of the Spanish intelligence agency helps us understand how early modern secret information networks functioned and sheds new light on questions of Jewish identity in a time of uprootedness and competing loyalties.

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Bay Days: The Managerial Revolutions and the Hudson’s Bay Company Department Stores, 1912‑1939

Historical Papers ◽

10.7202/030952ar ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 21 (1) ◽

pp. 173-196 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

David Monod

Keyword(s):

Business History ◽

Scientific Management ◽

American Business ◽

Department Stores ◽

Hudson's Bay Company ◽

Large Measure ◽

History Of ◽

Business Structures ◽

Marketing Methods ◽

Hudson’S Bay Company

Abstract North American business history has long been dominated by a belief in the centrality of entrepreneurial innovation to corporate success. This paper looks at the history of the Hudson's Bay Company Stores Department and attempts to explain from within the traditional business-history framework the company's prolonged inability to create a profitable chain of department stores in Western Canada. During the interwar years the HBC was highly competitive in its marketing methods and up-to-date in its business structure. Indeed, the company's failure seems to have stemmed in large measure from these very factors, from its excessive reliance upon scientific management formulas and organizational theories. It was only during the Depression that the Bay was able to recoup its losses by moving away from the professional orthodoxies of the twenties, returning to older business structures, and deciding on a more consumer-oriented approach.

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London's West End

10.1093/oso/9780198823414.001.0001 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Rohan McWilliam

Keyword(s):

Sex Industry ◽

Department Stores ◽

The West ◽

Street Life ◽

High Culture ◽

Dion Boucicault ◽

The World ◽

Oxford Street ◽

History Of ◽

Opera Houses

How did the West End of London become the world’s leading pleasure district? What is the source of its magnetic appeal? How did the centre of London become Theatreland? London’s West End is the first ever history of the area which has enthralled millions. From the Strand up to Oxford Street, the West End came to stand for sensation and vulgarity but also the promotion of high culture. The reader will explore the growth of theatres, opera houses, galleries, restaurants, department stores, casinos, exhibition centres, night clubs, street life, and the sex industry. The West End produced shows and fashions whose impact rippled outwards around the globe. During the nineteenth century, a neighbourhood that serviced the needs of the aristocracy was opened up to a wider public whilst retaining the imprint of luxury and prestige. The book tells the story of the great artists, actors, and entrepreneurs who made the West End: figures such as Gilbert and Sullivan, the playwright Dion Boucicault, the music hall artiste Jenny Hill, and the American retail genius Harry Gordon Selfridge who wanted to create the best shop in the world. We encounter the origins of the modern star system and celebrity culture. The book moves from the creation of Regent Street to the glory days of the Edwardian period when the West End was the heart of empire and the entertainment industry..

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The unburied victims of Kenya’s Mau Mau Rebellion: where and when does the violence end?

Human Remains in Society ◽

10.7228/manchester/9781526107381.003.0002 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

David M. Anderson ◽

Paul J. Lane

Keyword(s):

Human Remains ◽

Department Stores ◽

British Colonialism ◽

Mass Violence ◽

Human Osteology ◽

Mau Mau ◽

Post Conflict ◽

Conflict Situations ◽

History Of ◽

Peace And Reconciliation

This chapter outlines the circumstances by which the bodies of over four hundred and fifty individuals killed during the Mau Mau insurgency in Kenya came to be deposited in the Osteology Department stores at Kenya’s national museum in Nairobi, where they currently serve as that institution’s primary human osteology reference collection accessed by local and international researchers. The history of this collection is then discussed against the wider and ongoing context of memorialisation of the Mau Mau insurgency as a founding process in Kenya’s struggle against British colonialism and the birth of nationhood. It also explores some of the remaining divisions between Mau Mau supporters and so-called ‘loyalists’, and efforts at achieving peace and reconciliation involving these different constituencies and the role that this specific collection of human remains could play in such processes. The chapter concludes with a series of more general observations on commemorating victims of mass violence and the treatment of human remains in post-conflict situations.

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History of Hut 8 to December 1941 (1945)

The Essential Turing ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198250791.003.0010 ◽

2004 ◽

Author(s):

Patrick Mahon

Keyword(s):

Washington Dc ◽

British Government ◽

Department Stores ◽

The Public ◽

National Archives ◽

The Us ◽

Us Government ◽

History Of ◽

Public Record ◽

First Time

Patrick Mahon (A. P. Mahon) was born on 18 April 1921, the son of C. P. Mahon, Chief Cashier of the Bank of England from 1925 to 1930 and Comptroller from 1929 to 1932. From 1934 to 1939 he attended Marlborough College before going up to Clare College, Cambridge, in October 1939 to read Modern Languages. In July 1941, having achieved a First in both German and French in the Modern Languages Part II, he joined the Army, serving as a private (acting lancecorporal) in the Essex Regiment for several months before being sent to Bletchley. He joined Hut 8 in October 1941, and was its head from the autumn of 1944 until the end of the war. On his release from Bletchley in early 1946 he decided not to return to Cambridge to obtain his degree but instead joined the John Lewis Partnership group of department stores. John Spedan Lewis, founder of the company, was a friend of Hut 8 veteran Hugh Alexander, who effected the introduction. At John Lewis, where he spent his entire subsequent career, Mahon rapidly achieved promotion to director level, but his health deteriorated over a long period. He died on 13 April 1972. This chapter consists of approximately the first half of Mahon’s ‘The History of Hut Eight, 1939–1945’. Mahon’s typescript is dated June 1945 and was written at Hut 8. It remained secret until 1996, when a copy was released by the US government into the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in Washington, DC. Subsequently another copy was released by the British government into the Public Record Office at Kew. Mahon’s ‘History’ is published here for the first time. Mahon’s account is first-hand from October 1941. Mahon says, ‘for the early history I am indebted primarily to Turing, the first Head of Hut 8, and most of the early information is based on conversations I have had with him’.

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Literature of the 1900s

10.3366/edinburgh/9780748635061.001.0001 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Jonathan Wild

Keyword(s):

Middle Class ◽

Literary History ◽

Joseph Conrad ◽

Focal Points ◽

Literary Modernism ◽

Department Stores ◽

Lower Middle Class ◽

History Of ◽

Arnold Bennett ◽

Literary Innovation

This book challenges conventional views of the Edwardian period as either a hangover of Victorianism or a bystander to literary modernism. The text investigates the literary history of the Edwardian decade. This period, long overlooked by critics, is revealed as a vibrant cultural era whose writers were determined to break away from the stifling influence of preceding Victorianism. In the hands of this generation, which included writers such as Arnold Bennett, Joseph Conrad, E. M. Forster, Beatrix Potter, and H. G. Wells, the new century presented a unique opportunity to fashion innovative books for fresh audiences. Wild traces this literary innovation by conceptualising the focal points of his study as branches of one of the new department stores that epitomized Edwardian modernity. These ‘departments’ — war and imperialism, the rise of the lower middle class, children's literature, technology and decadence, and the condition of England — offer both discrete and interconnected ways in which to understand the distinctiveness and importance of the Edwardian literary scene. Overall, this book offers a long-overdue investigation into a decade of literature that provided the cultural foundation for the coming century.

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Vertical Bazaars of Modernity: Western Department Stores and Their Staff in Istanbul (1889–1921)

International Review of Social History ◽

10.1017/s0020859009990253 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 54 (S17) ◽

pp. 91-114 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Yavuz Köse

Keyword(s):

Career Paths ◽

Large Scale ◽

Ethnic Composition ◽

Department Stores ◽

Daily Newspaper ◽

History Of ◽

Late Ottoman Empire ◽

First Time ◽

The City ◽

Late Ottoman

SummaryThis article examines Western department stores active in Istanbul between 1889 and 1921. It explores two aspects crucial for the department stores’ retail system: location and personnel. It goes on to demonstrate that Western department stores were situated not only in the Western districts of the city but also in traditional areas, such as the bazaar district. Rather than being exclusive they appear to have been closely connected with local business and aimed to appeal to the ethnically highly mixed customer pool. Equally, the workforce was heterogeneous, with the majority of local employees having diverse ethnic backgrounds, including Greek, Jewish, and Armenian, though rarely Muslim. Based on a large-scale sample drawn from the address registers of the Annuaire Oriental yearbook, the analysis of personal letters, and on Ottoman daily newspaper and journals, this study sheds light on the individuals who worked at a number of department stores, their ethnic composition, sex ratio, duration of employment, the job types they carried out, as well as their income situation, career paths, and domiciles. It hopes to contribute to the labour history of the late Ottoman Empire by exploring, for the first time, the employees of Western department stores, workers who have rarely attracted the attention of scholars so far.

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