Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-pftt2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-03T22:45:17.313Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

New Issues in British Business History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2012

Leslie Hannah
Affiliation:
Professor of Business History, London School of Economics

Abstract

Business history has been a thriving academic industry in Britain for the last three decades. Following some pioneering case studies of Industrial Revolution entrepreneurs by the early giants of the discipline of economic history, the postwar generation has produced a series of high quality company histories. The first of these, published in 1954, was Charles Wilson's history of the Anglo-Dutch multinational Unilever, formed by a merger of Lever Brothers and Margarine Unie in 1929. Wilson's book set the pattern for a high standard of scholarship, resting on complete freedom of access to company archives, and for publication based on scholarly independence rather than the public relations needs of the commissioning organization. If some of its terms of reference now seem dated, and its framework of analysis somewhat unscientific, then that is an indication of the incentive Wilson provided for others to do better, particularly in the use of economic theory and of comparative analysis setting firms in their industrial or international context.

Type
Introduction
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1983

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Unwin, G., Samuel Oldknow and the Arkwrights: The Industrial Revolution at Stockport and Marple (University of Manchester Publications, Economic History Series, No. 1, 1924)Google Scholar; Ashton, T.S., Peter Stubs of Warrington (Manchester, 1939)Google Scholar; SirClapham, John, The Bank of England: A History, 1694–1914 (2 volumes, Cambridge, 1944)Google Scholar.

2 Wilson, Charles, The History of Unilever: A Study in Economic Growth and Social Change (2 volumes, London. 1954).Google Scholar A third volume appeared later; Wilson, C., Unilever 1945–1965: Challenge and Response in the Postwar Industrial Revolution (London, 1965).Google Scholar

3 Alford, Bernard W.E., W.D. & H.O. Wills and the Development of the UK Tobacco Industry. 1786–1965 (London, 1973)Google Scholar; Barker, Theo C., The Glassmakers: Pilkington: The Rise of an International Company, 1826–1976 (London, 1977)Google Scholar; Coleman, Donald C., Courtaulds: An Economic and Social History (3 volumes, Oxford, 1969 and 1980)Google Scholar; Mathias, Peter, Retailing Revolution: A History of Multiple Retailing in the Food Trades Based upon the Allied Suppliers Group of Companies (London, 1967)Google Scholar; Payne, Peter L., Colvilles and the Scottish Steel Industry (Oxford, 1979)Google Scholar; Supple, Barry, The Royal Exchange Assurance: A History of British Insurance, 1720–1970 (Cambridge, 1970).Google Scholar

4 Green, Edwin and Moss, Michael, A Busniess of National Importance: The Royal Mail Shipping Group, 1902–1937 (London, 1982)Google Scholar; Reader, William J., Imperial Chemical Industries: A History (2 volumes, Oxford, 1972)Google Scholar; Reader, William J., Bowater: A History (Cambridge, 1981)Google Scholar; Ferrier, Ronald W., The History of the British Petroleum Company, volume 1, The Developing Years, 1901–1932 (Cambridge 1982).Google Scholar Much of the interest among companies has been generated by the Business Archives Council, with headquarters in Denmark House, 15 Tooley Street, London SE1 2PN, which is also a major source of advice on company sources for historians interested in British business history.

5 There are, for example, concentrations of business historians at the Universities of Glasgow, Liverpool, London, and East Anglia. Among the important forthcoming works are Dr. Terry Gourvish's history of British Railways, Dr. Richard Davenport-Hines' history of the Glaxo pharmaceutical group, and the forthcoming histories of British overseas banking: Dr. Geoffrey Jones on the British Bank of the Middle East and Professor Frank King on the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. For a preview of the latter see King, Frank H.H. (editor), Eastern Banking: Essays in the History of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (London, 1983).Google Scholar

6 The Unit was established in 1979 with the author as its Director. Among the projects being undertaken are Dr. David Jeremy's Dictionary of Business Biography (a prosopographical study of the social and educational origins and business careers of 1000 leading British businessmen over the last 100 years), Dr. Geoffrey Jones's study of British multinationals, the work of Sir Arthur Knight and the author on modern relations between business and government, and Dr. Jonathan Liebenau's comparison of research and development in Britain, Germany, and the United States. Recent news of the Unit's research is published in the serials Business History (Frank Cass and Co, London, three times per year) and the Business History Newsletter (twice a year, from the Unit).

7 Chandler, Alfred D., “The Growth of the Transnational Industrial Firm in the United States and the United Kingdom: A Comparative Analysis,” Economic History Review, volume 33 (1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hannah, Leslie, Management Strategy and Business Development (London, 1976)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Chandler, Alfred D. and Daems, Herman, Managerial Hierarchies: Comparative Perspectives on the Rise of the Modern Industrial Enterprise (Cambridge, Mass., 1980)Google Scholar; Payne, Peter L., British Entrepreneurship in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Payne, Peter L., “Industrial entrepreneurshipand management in Great Britain” in Mathias, Peter and Postan, M.M., eds, The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, volume VII (Cambridge, 1978).Google Scholar

8 For an explanation of the slow development of the “new economic history” in these terms, see Hartwell, R. M., “Is the new economic history an export product? A comment on J.R.T. Hughes”, in McCloskey, D.N., ed., Essays on a Mature Economy: Britain After 1840 (London, 1971).Google Scholar More recently, and more generally, Professor Donald Coleman has identified the separate departments as a source of weakness in the discipline in an unpublished Suntory-Toyota lecture on “The rise and decline of economic history.”

9 The London Business School and the School of Management at the University of Bath both recently announced their intention of appointing a business historian to their faculty.

10 Chandler and Daems, Hierarchies; Levy-Leboyer, Maurice, ed., Le Patronat de la Seconde Industrialisation (Paris, 1979)Google Scholar; K. Nakagawa, ed., International Conference on Business History, five volumes (Tokyo, various dates); Horn, Norbert and Kocka, Jurgen, eds, Recht und Entwicklung der Grossunternehmen im 19. und Fruhen 20. Jahrhundert (Gottingen, 1979)Google Scholar; Hannah, L., ed., From Family Firm to Professional Management: Structure and Performance of Business Enterprise: Proceedings of Session B9 of the Eighth International Economic History Congress (Budapest, 1982).Google Scholar

11 Matthews, R.C.O., Feinstein, C.H., and Odling-Smee, J.C., British Economic Growth, 1856–1973 (Oxford, 1982).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 Idem, p. 22.

13 Maddison, A., Phases of Capitalist Development (Oxford, 1982).Google Scholar

14 E.g., McKendrick, Neil, “Josiah Wedgewood and Cost Accounting in the Industrial Revolution”, Economic History Review, volume 23 (1970).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 Crafts, N.F.R., “Industrial Revolution in England and France: Some Thoughts on the Question, ‘Why was England First?’,” Economic History Review, volume 30 (1977).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 PP. 165–68 above.

17 Habakkuk, H.J., American and British Technology in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 1962)Google Scholar; see also Saul, S.B., ed., Technological Change: The United States and Britain in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1970).Google Scholar

18 Jeremy, David J., Transatlantic Industrial Revolution: The Diffusion of Textile Technologies between Britain and America, 1790–1830s (Cambridge, Mass., 1981)Google Scholar; Rosenberg, N., “The direction of technical change: inducement mechanisms and focussing devices”, Economic Development and Cultural Change, October (1969).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 Shaw, Christine, “The large manufacturing employers of 1907,” Business History, volume XXV (March 1983)Google Scholar; Davis, Lance, “The capital markets and industrial concentration: the US and the UK, a comparative study”, Economic History Review, volume 19 (1966)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Payne, Peter L., “The emergence of the large-scale company in Great Britain, 1870–1914”, Economic History Review, volume 20 (1967).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 Hannah, L., The Rise of the Corporate Economy (London and Baltimore, 1976)Google Scholar; Prais, S.J., The Evolution of Giant Firms in Britain (Cambridge, 1976).Google Scholar

21 L. Hannah, Rise; Feinstein, Matthews and Odling-Smee, Growth, pp. 359–65.

22 Jones, Geoffrey G., “The expansion of British multinational manufacturing, 1890–1939,” in Inoue, T. and Okochi, A., eds, Overseas Business Activities (Tokyo, 1983).Google Scholar

23 Edelstein, M., Overseas investment in the Age of High Imperialism: The United Kingdom, 1850–1914 (New York, 1982).Google Scholar

24 Kennedy, W. P., Economic Maturity in Historical Perspective: A Critique of Britain's Economic Performance, 1870–1914 (Cambridge, forthcoming).Google Scholar

25 For some interesting comparisons of the nature of wealth elites, see Rubinstein, W. D., ed., Wealth and the Wealthy in the Modern World (London, 1980)Google Scholar; idem, “Entrepreneurial effort and entrepreneurial success: peak wealth-hold ing in three societies, 1850–1939”, Business History, volume XXV (March 1983).

26 Michie, Ranald C., Money, Mania and Markets: Investment, Company Formation and the Stock Exchange in Nineteenth Century Scotland (Edinburgh, 1981)Google Scholar; “Options, concessions, syndicates, and the provision of venture capital, 1880–1913”, Business History, volume XXIII (July, 1981); “The social web of investment in the nineteenth century”. International Review of the History of Banking (1979).

27 E.g. Fieldhouse, David K., Unilever Overseas: The Anatomy of a Multinational, 1895–1965, (London and Stanford, 1978).Google Scholar

28 McCloskey, Donald M. and Sandberg, Lars G., “From damnation to redemption: judgements on the late Victorian entrepreneur”, Explorations in Economic History, volume 9 (1971–2).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29 Sandberg, Lars G., Lancashire in Decline: A Study in Entrepreneurship, Technology and International Trade (Columbus, Ohio, 1974).Google ScholarLazonick, William H., “Competition, specialization, and industrial decline”, Journal of Economic History, vol 41, (March 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Factor costs and the diffusion of ring spinning in Britain prior to World War I,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol 7, (Fall 1980); “Industrial relations and technical change: the case of the self-acting mule,” Cambridge Journal of Economics, vol 3, (September 1979).

30 Blackburn, John A., “The vanishing UK cotton industry”, National Westminster Bank Review (November, 1982).Google Scholar

31 Olson, Mancur, The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagnation and Social Rigidities (New Haven, 1982).Google Scholar

32 Chandler, Alfred D., The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge, Mass., 1977), 339.Google Scholar

33 Hannah, L., “Managerial innovation and the rise of the large-scale company in interwar Britain”, Economic History Review, volume 27 (1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Meeks, Geoffrey, Disappointing Marriage: A Study of the Gains from Merger (Cambridge, Department of Applied Economics, Occasional Papers, 1977).Google Scholar

34 Cambridge, 1981.

35 Arrow, Kenneth J., “Social responsibility and economic efficiency”, Public Policy, volume 21, No. 3 (1973).Google Scholar

36 Hannah, Leslie and Kay, John A., Concentration in Modern Industry: Theory, Management and the UK Experience (London, 1977), 20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37 Currie, Robert, Industrial Politics (Oxford, 1979).Google Scholar