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American Manufacturers and Foreign Markets, 1870–1900: Business Historians and the “New Economic Determinists”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2012

William H. Becker
William H. Becker
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of History, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
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Abstract

Recent diplomatic historians have explained much of American expansionism at the end of the nineteenth century as the product of domestic industrial overcapacity and the resulting need to seek foreign markets. Evidence of business behavior, however, indicates that overseas expansion and exports were not a very important avenue through which U.S. businessmen sought to control prices and output. Indeed, in most of the industries which did engage in significant foreign activities, their expansion was usually the result of genuine competitive advantages rather than a sign of economic ill health.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 47 , Issue 4 , Winter 1973 , pp. 466 - 481
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1973

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References

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