Colleen Dunlavy

Biography

My interests center on what I have come to think of as the history of capitalism — an amalgam of business history, the history of technology, labor history, legal history, and political economy, with healthy doses of (quantitative) economic, social, and cultural history. At heart, I am a comparativist with special interests in the U.S. and Europe (especially Germany) in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

A key theme motivating my research, writing, and teaching is the relationship between political and economic change — in particular, understanding the manifold ways in which politics, broadly construed, has shaped economic change. Under the rubric of “politics,” I include not only policymaking (regulation and promotion) but also the (largely overlooked) effects on capitalist activity of the overall structure of political institutions.

My current research interests include: the history of shareholder voting rights in the U.S., Britain, France, and Germany in the nineteenth century; the history of “economic history” since the turn of the the twentieth century; the history of chain stores in the U.S. and Germany, 1870s-1930s; and the standardization movement in the U.S. and internationally in the 1920s.

Education

Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology
M.A., University of California – Berkeley
B.A., University of California – Berkeley

Books

Politics and Industrialization: Early Railroads in the United States and Prussia

Colleen Dunlavy. Politics and Industrialization: Early Railroads in the United States and Prussia. Princeton University Press, 1994.

How do national political institutions influence the process of industrial change? This comparative study of the birth of American and Prussian railroads offers historical insights into this critical, but seldom studied, question. Analyzing developments in the 1830s and 1840s, Colleen Dunlavy shows how two very different political structures affected the dynamics of railroad policy making, the organization of railroad interests, and the process of technological choice. Dunlavy examines the rich political context of a seeming paradox: authoritarian, centralized Prussia adopted a largely hands-off policy toward the railroads, but the more liberal, fragmented American government sought vigorously both to promote and to regulate the new industry. By also fragmenting interests and technological choices, the American structure impeded the emergence of the railroad as a system, while the centralized Prussian structure facilitated it. The book concludes by describing how the railroads themselves precipitated a transformation of both political structures by the 1850s. A keener sensitivity to the impact of political structures, Dunlavy shows, enriches our understanding of the complex interplay between industrial and political change, past and present.

Selected Publications

• With Thomas Welskopp. “Peculiarities and Myths: Comparing U.S. and German Capitalism.” German Historical Institute Bulletin no. 41 (Fall 2007): 33-64.
• “Social Conceptions of the Corporation: Insights from the History of Shareholder Voting Rights.” Washington and Lee Law Review, vol. 63, no. 4 (2006): 1347-1388. Reprinted in Rivista delle società, nr. 2/2007 March-April.
• “Why Did Some American Businesses Get So Big?” In Major Problems in American Business History. Edited by Regina Blaszczyk and Philip Scranton. New York: Houghton-Mifflin, 2006. pp. 257-263.
• “From Citizens to Plutocrats: 19th-Century Shareholder Voting Rights and Theories of the Corporation.” In Constructing Corporate America: History, Politics, Culture, eds. Kenneth Lipartito and David Sicilia. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Pp. 66-93.
• Politics and Industrialization: Early Railroads in the United States and Prussia. Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparative Perspectives, edited by Ira Katznelson, Marin Shefter, and Theda Skocpol. Princeton Studies in Business and Technology, edited by David Hounshell. (Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1994).

Selected Awards

• Fellow, Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History, Harvard University, Spring 2004
• Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Program Grant, 1999-2000; Officer’s Grant, 1997-98
• Fellow, Russell Sage Foundation, New York, 1998-99
• Thomas Newcomen Award (co-winner) for best book in business history published in the years 1992-1994, 1998
• German Marshall Fund Research Fellowship, 1997-98
• Romnes Award, University of Wisconsin–Madison, 1997-2002
• Vilas Associate Award, University of Wisconsin–Madison, 1995-97
• German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) Study Visit, Berlin, 1992
• American Council of Learned Societies Research Fellowship for Recent Recipients of the PhD, 1989

Advisor To

• John Balz

History Courses

• History 109 – History of American Capitalism – Syllabus 2013 (pdf)
• History 247 – American Business History – Syllabus 2013 (pdf)
• History 329 – History of American Capitalism – Syllabus 2015 (pdf)
• History 411 – History of American Technology
• History 500 – History Politics of Capialism – The Corporation
• History 537 – Theories of History
• History 600 – American Capitalism – Syllabus 2009 (pdf)
• History 600 – Corporations in American History – Syllabus 2007 (pdf)
• History 600 – Globalization – Syllabus 2013 (pdf)
• History 680/690 – Honors Thesis Colloquium – Syllabus 2010 (pdf)
• History 701 – History in a Global Perspective – Syllabus 2016 (pdf)
• History 703 – History and Theory
• History 710 – Digital History – Syllabus 2017 (pdf)
• History 753 – The Industrial Powers, 1860s-1910s
• History 822 – History Politics of Capitalism – The Corporation”
• History 900 – Intro to History for U.S. Historians – Syllabus 2011 (pdf)
• History 901 – Studies in American History