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The article deals with the image of pirates as represented in popular culture, and explores how the myth of the pirate in the human imaginary became connected to the ideas of freedom and an alternative way of life. The Golden Age of Piracy (17th and 18th century) is presented as the period where the most remarkable stories about pirates have their roots, and non-fictional and fictional accounts about pirates are discussed in order to identify the common elements of the stories. Books written by Alexander Exquemelin and captain Charles Johnson are the most important contemporary sources for the research concerning the life of pirates, but oral accounts, novels and popular movies have created since then a complete mythology of piratery
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Anglo-American and Hungarian economic historians follow different semantic patterns describing the same subjects. While the authors writing in English use three distinct terms to distinguish business history, entrepreneurship and the theory of the firm, the corresponding Hungarian words share a common root. This paper reviews the debates among the founding fathers of the discipline about the definition of the agenda and research methods of these topics both before and after World War II. The emergence of business history at Harvard Business School under the leadership of N. Gras mainly followed the German tradition of narrative historical economics. He denied any dominant role of formal economic theory and urged business historians to use several other disciplines, such as psychology and politics, too. A. Cole, the founder of the Research Center in Entrepreneurial History at Harvard, based the approach of his research group on the Schumpeterian concept of creative entrepreneur as the key figure in explaining the different issues of economic change and development. Faced with the problem of how to define entrepreneurship, the center failed to formulate a theory of economic change based on entrepreneurial activity and behaviour. In the meantime the character of the creative entrepreneur has been played down within organization and firm and was replaced by the entrepreneur co-ordinator who directs production (R. Coase) and by the middle-manager (A. Chandler). Both business history using a structuralistfunctionalist sociological approach in discussing large scale enterprises and the theory of firm based on transactions costs and economic analysis of law remain outside of the mainstream of history and economics. What they had in common was a sense of affinity for empirical data instead of pure theory. More than affinity even, it was a desire to get an insight into the “real world”.
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Historians usually assume that the rapid collapse of factories founded in the first half of the nineteenth century was normally a result of the lack of capital, expensive credit or the recession of the early 1840s. However, the documents concerning the foundation, management and bankruptcy of the Sugar Refinery (Cukorfinomító) established in Pest in 1830 by antiques dealer Károly Lichtl and his brother-in-law, Viennese merchant Károly Ellenberger, suggest that the downfall of their short-lived enterprise was rather brought about by the founder’s lack of expertise and adventurer personality. Besides the risks associated with the return on investments, the study demonstrates the dangers of imprudent bank loans and provides a glimpse into the rivalry among Pest merchants at the time. Lichtl was a genuine adventurer entrepreneur who jumped into any enterprise that promised good profit. He was quick to take bold chances as long as the consequences were to be borne by others. His creditor, Pest wholesaler Frigyes Kappel, was hoping for quick return on his investment when he loaned a significant sum to Lichtl without due care and thorough assessment. He was able to recover his capital only after a lengthy lawsuit and had to bear the unsavoury effects of defamation when his debtor sued him for usury.
More...Szuhay Péter (szerk.): Távolodó világaink. A cigány-magyar együttélés változatai
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