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Book ReviewsKatrina Honeyman aa University of LeedsPublished online: 28 Jul 2006.

To cite this article: Katrina Honeyman (1992) Book Reviews, Business History,34:4, 112-113

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00076799200000128

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112 BUSINESS HISTORY

Road to Power is also tripartite in its organisation. Part I[ gives a rather uncohesive and patchily constructed survey of Siberia's geography, recent his- tory, population, transport, relations with the major Asiatic powers, and of the regionalist controversy. Part I1 provides a meticulously researched account of the tortuous debates and inter-ministerial rivalries taking place in high government circles before the Tsar finally came down unequivocally on the side of the pro- railroaders and gave his imperial signal to start building. The third section reassesses the role of Count Sergei Witte, the ambitious and intriguing Minister of Finance who more than anyone else was the driving force behind the project; examines the railroad's wider contribution to the development of Siberia's industry, agriculture and settlement; and finally describes the dreadful geophysi- cal and climatic conditions, manpower and managerial problems, dangerous engineeering deficiencies, bribery and corruption, lack of proper book-keeping, bureaucratic incompetence, breathcatching 'bungling' and crime which be- devilled construction from the outset - thereby in many ways frustrating the very political, military-strategic and colonising objectives which it was planned to achieve.

It is difficult not to share Marks's conclusion that this example of the Russian state's participation in the planning and implementation of a major industrial enterprise foreshadows many of the problems created by the Stalinist administrative-command system of management from which the government of the former USSR is now endeavouring to extricate itself. That aside, Road to Power is fine piece of scholarship which makes a unique contribution to the study of late imperial Russian history in general, and to the history of Siberia in particular.

Lancaster University ALAN WOOD

LENARD R. BERLANSTEIN, Big Business and Industrial Conflict: A Social Hktory of the Parisian Gas Company. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. Pp.xiv + 348. $42.50).

This is an awesome book. The social history of an industrial enterprise would be a welcome contribution in itself, Berlanstein has produced a work that penetrates the core of a number of issues that straddle business and labour history.

Berlanstein's objective is to use the experience of the Parisian Gas Co. (PGC) to further understanding of the social and political impact of industrialisation in France. He analyses the company's relatively brief history from the perspectives of the various actors and within the dynamic ideological context of the second half of the nineteenth century. The economic performance of the monopolistic PGC is appraised and found to be broadly in line with prevailing trends; and the activities of the company are interpreted both as reflecting the decline in economic liberalism in the 1890s and as suggesting a model for the shift to modern industrial society. Episodes in the life of the company reveal a sluggish response to external socio-~olitical and economic forces that required a restructurine of relationshim " between labour and capital, in particular a revision of the work process.

That the PGC reflected trends in French industrialisation is indicated by Berlanstein's analysis of the new social groups - the managerial class, the white collar clerical workers, and a hierarchically structured manual working class- and

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BOOK REVIEWS 113

their responses to the capitalist system, which forms the substance of the book. The company's decision makers operated within the context of an authoritarian paternalist management and were slow to innovate either in industrial relations or in managerial stjles; and their unimaginative business practices in many ways resembled those of the traditional Datronat. Berlanstein moves on to test the thesis that clerical work became degraded as it expanded towards the late nineteenth century, and concludes that while the white collar workers in the PGC successfully resisted changes in the labour process, especially the more intense work patterns that management sought to impose, remuneration was inadequate and promotion prospects limited. Thus collective action by the clerical workers was identified as a struggle to improve pay rather than to retain control over the work process. Berlanstein then contributes to the under researched area of the impact of industrialisation on artisanal occupations and emphasises the length and complexity of the process of proletarianisation, which included intermediate stages in the dilution of skill. In their variety of experiences in the workplace and in the nature and form of their collective protest, Berlanstein believes PGC workers to have been characteristic of the new industrial labour force.

In this beautifully written book - which conveys so much both explicitly and by implication about the nature of French political and social structures and indus- trial history - Berlanstein's achievements are remarkable. Conventional wisdom, which identifies the nature of enterprise and entrepreneurship as constraints on French industrial progress, is subtly refined, yet Berlanstein's findings lend some support the notion that France's international position was potentially weakened by a culturally informed conservatism, risk aversion and unresponsiveness to the opportunities of mass marketing. To the dearth of empirical research on the impact of struggles between capital and labour on the French artisan and other skilled workers during industrial development. Berlanstein has added a work of vitality and great sigr&cance. Other issues are confronted in this book, such as the influence of republican politics on the industrial enter~rise: and it is the

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apparently effort~eis manne; in which Berlanstein moves from one specialist discipline to another while identifying their interaction, that is the most impres- sive feature of this book. Business historians have much to learn from Ber- lanstein.

University of Lee& KATRINA HONEYMAN

THEO HORSTMANN, Die Allierten und die deutschen Grossbanken: Bankenpolitik nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg in Westdeutschland (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag, 1991. Pp.x + 324. DM 98.00).

Theo Horstmann's study of post-war banking policy in West Germany makes a major contribution to several historical debates. This detailed study of Allied policy-making shows clearly the limitations of the military governments' ability to impose institutional .reforms against German opposition. Despite American inspired decentralisation of the large Berlin banks, the Deutsche Bank, Dresdner Bank and Commerzbank re-emerged as organisational units in 1957. The failure of the Allies to achieve a lasting reform of the banking sector stands out in sharp contrast to the successful decontrol of the German iron and steel industry.

Horstmann traces the motives of the different agents meticulously. The American administrators saw the large German banks as facilitators of the Nazis'

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