The great “higher commercial school” experiment: examples in Belgium, China, and the United States

This study explores the “higher commercial” (HC) school concept first developed in nineteenth-century Europe. With their focus on modern language, fieldwork, geography, history, and business content, these were no mere commercial schools; they were language schools, research institutes, and graduate schools all rolled into one. Moreover, these schools were not simply the brainchild of educators and administrators operating in individual nation states in specific historical periods; the HC concept appears to have been repeatedly revived in strikingly different contexts. To make our case, we offer Antwerp’s Higher Institute of Commerce (est. 1852), the Japanese-run Tōa Dōbun Shoin (est. 1901) in Shanghai, and the American Institute of Foreign Trade (est. 1945) in Glendale, Arizona. Our study ponders several questions. What central features did these three HC institutions share? How were these institutions able to powerfully challenge the existing university system? If the concept of “higher commercial education” was so effective, experiencing repeated revivals over the decades, why did the model not prove to be more durable?