I just finished up a fantastic weekend at the second biannual Richard Robinson Business History Workshop, this year called "Business and Environment in History: Dealing in Nature and Ecology, Past and Futures." It was a great chance to meet scholars in the midst of projects at the intersection of business and environmental history and exchange thoughts on works in progress. I presented on depictions of nature in official Mexican reports and maps from the Porfiriato, and got to talk about my favorite Antonio García Cubas map, the Carta Agrícola from the 1885 Picturesque and Historical Atlas of the United Mexican States and bureaucratic exhortations to make the most of Providence's gifts. The conference was refreshingly international in scope, with talks from Jennifer Eaglin on drought and Brazil's ethanol programs and Noah Haiduc-Dale on the endurance of subsistence fisheries in the Persian Gulf amongst others, plus thought-provoking pieces on risk abatement and community in Anaconda's Butte, MT mines from Brian Leech, landscape and oil pipelines from Sarah Stanford-McIntyre, and a slough of others on resource management and environmental regulation in the United States. Congratulations to the organizers for a wonderfully productive and well-run conference!
See more about our discussions at #RobBusHist