The Promises and Pitfalls of a Self-Conscious "History of Capitalism" Course, or, Teaching “Business History” as “History of Capitalism”

The core themes of a business history course usually include:  the evolution of firms, industries, business-government, and management-labor relations.  Since beginning in 1984 to teach “American business history” at OSU (at first to over 300 students at a time), I have taken a broader “history of capitalism” approach.  One reason for this was didactic:  The course was probably the only exposure to history that the business majors (who comprised the majority of the students in the classes) would take in their four-plus years of undergraduate study.  I included a lot of “Western civ” stuff in the lectures (beginning c. 1000 and weaving together into my narrative technology, demographics, religion, history of ideas, economics).  Another reason that I branched out beyond the core business history themes was my own view of the narrative and of “history” and “business history.”  Students, I believed, should know a little about the key economists (Smith, Marx, and Keynes) and about artists’ views of business (thus I assigned novels by Horatio Alger, Upton Sinclair, and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.)  Because I teach “American” capitalism, there are some pitfalls I have to confront (e.g., dealing with “exceptionalism” is a must; hinting at the global and comparative without changing the focus on the U.S.), but the promises are so positive (e.g., students recognizing the rich interconnections between economics and culture and the inherent contradictions and paradoxes) that I continue to present the course as “history of American capitalism.”  Indeed, this year I changed the course title to reflect what I have been teaching for a quarter of a century.