The roots of business history

Abstract

Determined efforts to ensure the preservation of the business records of private enterprises and commercial and industrial organisations are a feature of this century. The task has been tackled in various ways: in some countries special national or regional business archives have been set up to which enterprises can transfer their records for safe keeping; in others, records are deposited with the normal state record offices, which may be either national or provincial archives; in others again, there are central institutions which draw up lists of the records available at the various individual enterprises themselves. At the same time efforts are generally made to persuade concerns to ensure that their records are preserved.