Business history and legal history

Abstract

The relation between corporations, the market and the legal framework is crucial for understanding the development and function of the modern enterprise. The legal framework determines – and is determined by – the development of economic life, nationally, regionally and internationally. Business historians have often used legal material in their studies, however usually from a strict business history perspective. Drawing also from legal theory and method can contribute to a deeper understanding of the interplay between law and business, for example in terms of concepts such as ‘hard law’, ‘soft law’ and ‘co-regulation’. In the same way, legal scholarship has dealt with business law, but would benefit from borrowing tools from the business history toolkit. Institutional theory is one of the pillars of this article, together with theories and methods focusing on law as a non-stable, multi-layer system with porous borders. The analysis starts with a discussion of the relationship between business history and legal history from a theoretical and methodological perspective. It continues with two cases at the borderland of business history and legal history: finance and fashion. Both cases serve as illustrations for the different roles that the state can assume as well as the different methodological approaches that are needed for an analysis of the state activities and the interaction between state, market and business.