Abstract
The quality of British entrepreneurship in the nineteenth century is continually being reassessed. Until the mid 1960s a major leitmotiv in accounts of British economic development from the heroic days of the Industrial Revolution to the eve of the First World War was the steady dissipation of a fund of entrepreneurship which, it has been implied, reached its greatest abundance during and immediately after the Napoleonic Wars. From being organisers of change who were ‘instrumental in delivering society from the fate predicted for it by Malthus’ [254: 129] by having the ‘wit and resource to devise new instruments of production and new methods of administering industry’ [172: 161], British entrepreneurs had, by the latter decades of the nineteenth century, come to be responsible for Britain’s failure to retain its role as workshop of the world. Britain’s international economic dominance, once so obvious, had been yielded to indefatigable and enterprising American manufacturers and their ‘drummers’ (commercial travellers), and to persevering, multi-lingual, scientifically-trained Germans.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes and References
Arthur Shadwell, Industrial Efficiency, new edn (1909) p. 653. That Shadwell’s criticisms were not without foundation is apparent in several recent studies; see, for example, Mary Rose on Edward Hyde Greg [333: 92–5] Richard Wilson on Sir Walter Greene [198, vol. II: 673], and Maurice Kirby on Joseph Whitwell Pease [299: 55].
For an interesting discussion of entrepreneurship, business performance and industrial development, see Alford [231]; Casson’s economic theory of the entrepreneur [177] is valuable.
My own researches into the files of the early Scottish companies [52] makes me very sceptical of Kennedy’s argument that ‘at the root of this very hesitant development lay the fact that the legal requirements governing managerial behaviour and the disclosure of company affairs under limited liability were so minimally drawn as to place the company’s directors in virtually unchallengeable and unchecked possession of the company’s assets’ [31: 113, emphasis supplied].
Although, as Lazonick [34: 119–39] has recently emphasised, this took a remarkably long time.
The phrase used by Richard Wilson [226: 122] which, he asserts, bears no resemblance to the activities of the Leeds merchants.
There are, of course, exceptions. For an interesting — if not necessarily typical — example, see Minchinton’s study of the tinplate makers of West Wales [134: 106–7].
It has to be said that the motives which inspired some industrialists to invest in land were not confined to the quest for prestige. Mary Rose has shown that the Gregs purchased land because it was safe investment, and Tar from being a hindrance to the millowner, land might prove a positive advantage, by making mortgages easier to obtain in time of need, or by improving the return on capital’ [332: 79–88]; and Hudson has emphasised the importance of the ownership of landed property in gaining access to credit [115: 269].
Details of some of the houses built for Victorian entrepreneurs are provided by Mark Girouard’s fascinating study, The Victorian Country House (Oxford, 1971); for examples cited, see pp. 7, 8, 184, 186–7.
Byres has shown how the Bairds of Gartsherrie conformed to the Buddenbrook dynamic. Control of their great firm passed out of the hands of the family after the impressive efforts of the second generation had given it a position of supremacy in the Scottish iron industry [232, vol. II: 802–6]. One particularly odious member of the third generation, ‘Squire Baird’ as he was nicknamed, a backer of prizefighters, had the dubious, if appropriate, distinction of being accorded a pen-picture by the scurrilous Frank Harris in My Life and Loves (1964), vol. 3, ch. XIII.
It was observed by G. d’Eichthal in 1828 that: ‘Throughout Lancashire no family survives longer than two generations. Children brought up to habits of luxury and idleness are incapable of salvaging their business when fortune turns against them’ (quoted by Gatrell [18: 117]). Data on the West of England cloth industry in the first half of the century show a very high mortality rate, and even the names of the relatively few surviving firms may have concealed a change of partners [131: 104–5]. The volatility of firms in the cotton industry in the early nineteenth century, ‘with high exit rates compensated by high entry rates’, is demonstrated by Lloyd-Jones and Le Roux [41: 147].
In both cases it is intended to subject the data collected by the galaxy of authors to computer-assisted analysis.
For these unique companies, see Roland Smith [160], R. E. Tyson [342; 343], W. A. Thomas [162: 145–68] and, particularly, D. A. Farnie [104: 244–73].
That some attempted to do so is evident from the pioneering study by Haydn Jones of Accounting, Costing and Cost Estimation [in] Welsh Industry: 1700–1830 [121].
After the first edition of this study appeared, Roy Church subjected this section to protracted critical examination [7: 19–43]. Since several of his strictures and suggested modifications are not only tangential but rest on foundations ‘only marginally less flimsy’ than my own, I have retained my original treatment of this period in the hope that it may continue to stimulate constructive debate and inspire further empirical inquiry. I would add only that my own explorations since the early 1970s, primarily into Scottish business archives [141; 52], have proved to be consistent with the majority of the hypotheses put forward in the following pages.
Of the surviving 1200 companies of the 30,000 firms registered as companies in London between 1856 and 1889, the majority are concerned with banking, insurance, food, drink and leisure or are professional associations. Industrial concerns are relatively rare. See Richmond and Stockford [365].
Professor Church regards this opinion ‘as quite simply untenable’ [7: 38] and chastises me for citing it. It must be confessed that I found it irrisistible! This is not the place to pursue our differing interpretations of the period, suffice it to say that the differences between us on the question of profits are briefly discussed by Mokyr [249: 866–9].
It must be confessed that this observation is founded on an acquaintance with a fairly limited range of railway equipment, the technical understanding of which took all too long to acquire.
Considerable evidence on this practice is contained in the Minutes of Evidence of the Select Committee on Trade Marks, 1862 (212, xii, pp. 431–627). See also Redford [146: 42], Alexander [65: 114–15, 126, 149, Jefferys [117: passim].
For a brief but cogent discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of employing commission agents both at home and overseas, see Stephen Nicholas, ‘Agency Contracts, Institutional Modes, and the Transition to Foreign Direct Investment by British Manufacturing Multinationals before 1939’, Journal of Economic History, XLIII (1983), 677–9.
As Platt argues, for the small manufacturer this often made good sense. ‘“Never thou put salt water between thee and thy money” was the advice which the British manufacturer received from his cradle’ [142: 142].
The foregoing argument — based upon a reading of a variety of business archives supplemented by numerous hints in secondary sources — is set down as an hypothesis requiring more rigorous empirical testing. Needless to say, it is only our general ignorance of marketing — and the significance attached to it by the author — which makes its inclusion permissible in a study such as this.
As William Rathbone of Liverpool wrote to his wife in July 1869: ‘My feeling with a merchant was that when he got over £200,000 he was too rich for the Kingdom of Heaven’ [308: 3].
It might be helpful to emphasise a point made by McCloskey and Sandberg: The opportunities foregone in neglecting the best technique have been expressed in a variety of ways and this gives a misleading impression of heterogeneity of purpose in the new work. The various measures used are essentially identical. Higher profits can be achieved if more output can be produced with the same inputs, that is if productivity can be raised. The measuring rod for entrepreneurial failure, then, can be expressed indifferently as the money amount of profit foregone, as the proportion by which foreign exceeded British productivity, as the distance between foreign and British production functions, or as the difference in cost between foreign and British techniques. All of these give the same result and each can be translated exactly into any one of the others. [247; 103] For a criticism of the methodological technique involved, see Nicholas [250].
It is the consistent appraisal of entrepreneurial efficiency, using a variety of techniques, that makes the studies of shipping companies by Hyde and his colleagues at the University of Liverpool so valuable [293; 294; 308; 309].
A formidable list of new inventions and innovations more quickly taken up by Americans and Europeans than by the British was compiled in 1916 by H. G. Gray (a member of the Mosely Educational Commission to the United States in 1903) and Samuel Turner [236].
Byatt has illustrated the fact that in the electrical industries, ‘British businessmen were not very good at using their engineers’ [82: 190], and Pollard and Robertson that in shipbuilding, ‘few builders maintained even rudimentary laboratory facilities or employed any scientists’ [144: 137, emphasis supplied].
The study by Ross J. S. Hoffman [239] is heavily reliant on this source. It is interesting to compare his findings with those of Platt [142: 136–72], whose analysis of the same material is much more understanding of economic realities. See also Alfred Marshall [45: 135–6] and, for a more favourable view of the British overseas marketing performance in the decades before 1914, Nicholas [251].
Opinions of H.M. Diplomatic and Consular Officers on British Trade Methods, Cd.9078 (1898) p. 5. See the discussion by Aldcroft [230: 295–9].
For comparative figures of travellers in the Swiss market at the close of the century, see Chapman [6; 253].
Some idea of the expenses incurred in overseas representation is given by Platt [142: 143–4]. See also Payne [318: 190], Davis [281: 33–5] and Hoffman [239: 87]. J. H. Fenner & Co’s principal foreign representative, operating in southern and south-eastern Europe, was so generously remunerated with salary and commission that in 1910–13 he was earning more than the company’s managing director [281: 33].
For an interesting example — the way in which Singers built up its European markets — see R. B. Davis, ‘“Peacefully Working to Conquer the World”: The Singer Manufacturing Company in Foreign Markets, 1854–1889’, Business History Review, XLIII (1969) especially 306–11.
Ministry of Reconstruction, Report of the Committee on Trusts, Cd.9236 (1918), p. 3.
Ibid., p. 22. See Report of the Departmental Committee appointed by the Board of Trade to consider the position of the Textile Trades after the War, Cd.9070 (1918), p. 113.
This argument, based upon business archives to which the author has had access, receives some support from the Bolton Report, Report of the Committee of Inquiry on Small Firms, Cmnd.4811 (1971) pp. 37–9.
This point was made in a number of reports of the committees set up to consider the position of several trades after the war of 1914–18. See, for example, Report of the Departmental Committee appointed by the Board of Trade to consider the position of the Shipping and Shipbuilding Industry after the War Cd.9092 (1918), p. 31, paras. 89–90: ‘Whilst individualism has been of inestimable advantage in the past, there is reason to fear that individualism by itself may fail to meet the competition of the future in Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering, as it has failed in other industries. We are convinced that the future of the nation depends to a large extent upon increased co-operation in its great industries.’ How the existence of many mutually suspicious firms could constitute a formidable barrier to improvement in an industry is perhaps best illustrated in tinplate [134: 87–8, 198].
Although the central thrust of Allan’s article [68] is both sound and stimulating, it can and has been criticised in detail. I am grateful to Dr Gordon Boyce for allowing me to read his unpublished manuscript entitled ‘The Development of the Cargo Fleet Iron Co., 1900–1914: A Study of Entrepreneurship, Planning, and Production Costs in the Northeast Coast Basic Steel Industry’.
Mancur Olson, The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities (New Haven, Conn., 1982), see especially pp. 77–87.
See the criticisms of Wiener’s thesis by Saul [55: 69–70]; Coleman and MacLeod [235: 599–600]; McKendrick [42: 101, 103]; and J. M. Winter [42: 185–6].
This is not the place to take up this major question but it is worthy of note that Kennedy [22: 151–83; 30; 31] implies that even entrepreneurs of Schumpeterian stature would have found it difficult to achieve rapid structural change in the late Victorian economy because of the inadequacies of the capital market, cf. the cogent, if brief, discussion by Lee [37: 66–70].
It is not without significance that Elbaum, Lazonick’s co-editor of The Decline of the British Economy, remarks in the course of his illuminating paper: ‘That British firms none the less lagged behind their competitors was less the result of entrepreneurial failure — as the term is conventionally understood — than of the constraints on individual entrepreneurial action posed by market conditions and a rigid institutional environment’ [15: 54, emphasis supplied].
Manufacturing labour productivity in the United Kingdom in 1870 was only 71 per cent of that in services; in 1913, only 46 per cent [38, Table 1]. Even so, an important component of the service industries, insurance, has not escaped criticism from Trebilcock for entrepreneurial failings in the late Victorian period [42: 137–72].
C. Wilson, ‘Canon Demant’s Economic History’, Cambridge Journal, VI (1953–4), p. 286.
See Jonathan Boswell, The Rise and Decline of Small Firms, (1973), pp.36, 68–74; Donald A. Hay and Derek J. Morris, Unquoted Companies (1984).
See, for example, K. Cowling, P. Stoneman et al., Mergers and Economic Performance (1980).
S. G. Checkland, review of Coleman’s Courtauld’s in Economic History Review, 2nd ser. XXIII (1970), 559–60.
Select Bibliography: I General Works and Those Concerned with Industrial Structure and Organisation
T. S. Ashton, ‘The Growth of Textile Businesses in the Oldham District, 1884–1924’, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, LXXXIX (1926).
W. Ashworth, ‘Changes in the Industrial Structure, 1870–1914’, Yorkshire Bulletin of Economic and Social Research, XVII (1965).
Correlli Barnett, The Audit of War (1986).
David Cannadine, ‘The Present and the Past in the English Industrial Revolution, 1880–1980’, Past and Present, No. 103 (1984).
A. D. Chandler, The Growth of the Transnational Industrial Firm in the United States and the United Kingdom: A Comparative Analysis’, Economic History Review, 2nd Ser., XXXIII (1980).
S. J. Chapman, Work and Wages, Pt I: Foreign Competition (1904).
Roy Church (ed.), The Dynamics of Victorian Business (1980).
J. H. Clapham, An Economic History of Modern Britain, 3 vols (Cambridge, 1926–38).
P. Lesley Cook, Effects of Mergers: Six Studies (1958).
P. L. Cottrell, Industrial Finance, 1830–1914. The Finance and Organisation of English Manufacturing Industry (1980).
N. F. R. Crafts, British Economic Growth during the Industrial Revolution (1985).
Francois Crouzet, The Victorian Economy (1982).
A. B. Dubois, The English Business Company After the Bubble Act, 1720–1800 (New York, 1938).
R. S. Edwards and H. Townsend, Business Enterprise. Its Growth and Organisation (1958).
Bernard Elbaum and William Lazonick (eds), The Decline of the British Economy (Oxford, 1986).
P. Fitzgerald, Industrial Combination in England (1927).
P. S. Florence, Ownership, Control and Success of Large Companies (1961).
V. A. C. Gatrell, ‘Labour, Power and the Size of Firms in Lancashire Cotton in the Second Quarter of the Nineteenth Century’, Economic History Review, 2nd Ser., XXX (1977).
H. J. Habakkuk, Industrial Organisation since the Industrial Revolution. The Fifteenth Fawley Foundation Lecture (Southampton, 1968).
Tom Haddon, Company Law and Capitalism (1972).
Leslie Hannah, ‘Mergers in British Manufacturing Industry, 1880–1918’, Oxford Economic Press, New Ser., XXVI (1974).
Leslie Hannah (ed.), Management Strategy and Business Development. An Historical and Comparative Study (1976).
Leslie Hannah, The Rise of the Corporate Economy 2nd edn (1983).
A. E. Harrison, ‘Joint-stock Company Flotation in the Cycle, Motor-vehicle and Related Industries, 1882–1914’, Business History, XXIII (1981).
E. J. Hobsbawm, Industry and Empire (1969).
B. C. Hunt, The Development of the Business Corporation in Britain 1800–1967 (Cambridge, Mass., 1936).
P. Ireland, ‘The Rise of the Limited Liability Company’, International Journal of the Sociology of Law, XII (1984).
J. B. Jeffreys, ‘The Denomination and Character of Shares, 1855–1885’, Economic History Review, XVI (1946).
J. B. Jeffreys, Trends in Business Organisation in Great Britain Since 1856 (New York, 1977).
William P. Kennedy, ‘Economic Growth and Structural Change in the United Kingdom, 1870–1914’ and see the appended ‘Discussion’ by Ben Baack and Donald McCloskey. Journal of Economic History, XLII (1982).
William P. Kennedy, ‘Notes on Economic Efficiency in Historical Perspective: The Case of Britain, 1870–1914’, Research in Economic History, vol. 9 (1984).
C. P. Kindleberger, Economic Growth in France and Britain, 1851–1950 (Cambridge, Mass., 1964).
D. S. Landes, ‘The Structure of Enterprise in the Nineteenth Century. The Cases of Britain and Germany’, Comité International des Sciences Historiques, XL Congrès Internationale des Sciences Historiques, Stockholm, Rapports V: Histoire Contemporaire, Uppsala, 1960.
William Lazonick, ‘Strategy, Structure and Management Development in the United States and Britain’ in K. Kobayashi and H. Morikawa (eds), Development of Managerial Enterprise (Tokyo, 1986).
C. H. Lee, ‘Regional Growth and Structural Change in Victorian Britain’, Economic History Review, 2nd Ser., XXXIV (1981).
C. H. Lee, ‘The Service Sector, Regional Specialization, and Economic Growth in the Victorian Economy’, Journal of Historical Geography, 10 (1984).
C. H. Lee, The British Economy since 1700: A macroeconomic perspective (1986).
C. H. Lee, ‘Growth and Productivity in Services in the Industrial Economies’ (forthcoming).
H. Levy, Monopolies, Cartels and Trusts in British Industry (1927).
R. Lloyd-Jones and A. A. Le Roux, ‘The Size of Firms in the Cotton Industry, 1815–41’, Economic History Review, 2nd Ser., XXXIII (1980).
R. Lloyd-Jones and A. A. Le Roux, ‘Marshall and the Birth and Death of Firms: The Growth and Size Distributions of Firms in the Early Nineteenth Century Cotton Industry’, Business History, XXIV (1982).
Neil McKendrick and R. B. Outhwaite (eds), Business Life and Public Policy. Essays in Honour of D. C. Coleman (Cambridge, 1986).
H. W. Macrosty, The Trust Movement in British Industry (1907).
Sheila Mariner, ‘English Bankruptcy Records and Statistics before 1850’, Economic History Review, 2nd Ser., XXXIII (1980).
Alfred Marshall, Industry and Trade, 4th edn (1923).
W. H. Marwick, ‘The Limited Company in Scottish Economic Development’, Economic History, III (1937).
Peter Mathias, ‘Conflicts of Function in the Rise of Big Business: The British Experience’ in H. F. Williamson (ed.), Evolution of International Business Structures (Newark, New Jersey, 1975).
M. S. Moss and J. R. Hume, ‘Business Failure in Scotland, 1839–1913: A Research Note’, Business History, XXV (1983).
T. B. Napier, ‘The History of Joint Stock and Limited Liability Companies’, in A Century of Law Reform (1901).
Tony Orhnial (ed.) Limited Liability and the Corporation (1982).
P. L. Payne, ‘The Emergence of the Large-scale Company in Great Britain’, Economic History Review, 2nd Ser., XX (1967).
P. L. Payne, The Early Scottish Limited Companies, 1856–1895 (Edinburgh, 1980).
P. L. Payne, ‘Family Business in Britain: An Historical and Analytical Survey’ in Akio Okochi and Shigeaki Yasuoka (eds), Family Business in the Era of Industrial Growth (Tokyo, 1984).
S. J. Prais, The Evolution of Giant Firms in Britain (1976).
S. B. Saul, The Myth of the Great Depression, 1873–1896, 2nd edn (1985).
J. Saville, ‘Sleeping Partnerships and Limited Liability, 1850–1856’, Economic History Review, 2nd Ser., VIII (1956).
H. A. Shannon, ‘The Coming of General Limited Liability’, Economic History, II (1931).
H. A. Shannon, ‘The First Five Thousand Limited Companies and their Duration’, Economic History, II (1932).
H. A. Shannon, ‘The Limited Companies of 1866 and 1883’, Economic History, IV (1932–3).
Christine Shaw, ‘The Large Manufacturing Employers of 1907’, Business History, XXV (1983).
John M. Stopford, ‘The Origins of British-based Multinational Manufacturing Enterprises’, Business History Review, XVLIII (1974).
Geoffrey Todd, ‘Some Aspects of Joint-stock Companies, 1844–1900’, Economic History Review, IV (1932–33).
M. A. Utton. ‘Some Features of the Early Merger Movements in British Manufacturing Industry’, Business History, XIV (1972).
E. Welbourne, ‘Bankruptcy Before the Era of Victorian Reform’, Cambridge Historical Journal, IV (1932).
II Studies of Particular Trades, Industries and Regions
David Alexander, Retailing in England during the Industrial Revolution (1970).
G. C. Allen, The Industrial Development of Birmingham and the Black Country (1929).
R. C. Allen, ‘International Competition in Iron and Steel, 1850–1913’, Journal of Economic History, XXXIX (1979).
R. C. Allen, ‘Entrepreneurship and Technical Progress in the North-east Coast Pig Iron Industry: 1850–1913’, Research in Economic History, 6 (1981).
P. S. Andrews and E. Brunner, Capital Development in Steel (Oxford, 1952).
T. S. Ashton, Iron and Steel in the Industrial Revolution, 2nd edn (Manchester, 1951).
T. C. Barker and J. R. Harris, A Merseyside Town in the Industrial Revolution: St Helens, 1750–1900 (Liverpool, 1954).
J. N. Bartlett, ‘The Mechanisation of the Kidderminster Carpet Industry’, Business History, IX (1967).
J. N. Bartlett, Carpeting the Millions. The Growth of Britain’s Carpet Industry (Edinburgh, 1978).
Joyce M. Bellamy, ‘Cotton Manufacture in Kingston Upon Hull’, Business History, IV (1982).
Alan Birch, The Economic History of the British Iron and Steel Industry, 1784–1879 (1967).
D. Bremner, The Industries of Scotland. Their Rise, Progress and Present Condition (1869).
D. L. Burn, ‘The Genesis of American Engineering Competition’, Economic History, II (1931).
Duncan Burn, The Economic History of Steel Making, 1867–1939 (Cambridge, 1961).
T. H. Burnham and G. O. Hoskins, Iron and Steel in Britain, 1870–1930 (1943).
John Butt, ‘The Scottish Cotton Industry during the Industrial Revolution 1780–1840’, in Comparative Aspects of Scottish and Irish Economic and Social History, 1600–1900 (ed. L. M. Cullen and T. C. Smout) (Edinburgh, 1980).
Neil K. Buxton, The Economic Development of the British Coal Industry (1978).
I. C. R. Byatt, The British Electrical Industry, 1875–1914. The Economic Returns of a New Technology (Oxford, 1979).
R. H. Campbell, The Rise and Fall of Scottish Industry, 1707–1939 (Edinburgh, 1980).
S. D. Chapman, The Early Factory Masters (Newton Abbot, 1967).
S. D. Chapman, ‘Fixed Capital Formation in the British Cotton Industry, 1770–1815’, Economic History Review, 2nd Ser., XXIII (1970).
S. D. Chapman, ‘The Cost of Power in the Industrial Revolution: The Case of the Textile Industry’, Midland History, I (1971).
S. D. Chapman, ‘Enterprise and Innovation in the British Hosiery Industry, 1750–1850’, Textile History, V (1974).
S. D. Chapman, ‘Financial Restraints on the Growth of Firms in the Cotton Industry, 1790–1850’, Economic History Review, XXXII (1979).
S. D. Chapman, ‘Working Capital in the British Cotton Industry, 1770–1850’, Mimeo (undated, c. 1977).
Sydney J. Chapman, The Lancashire Cotton Industry. A Study in Economic Development (Manchester, 1904).
R. A. Church, ‘The Effect of the American Export Invasion on the British Boot and Shoe Industry, 1885–1914’, Journal of Economic History, XXXIII (1968).
R. A. Church, ‘Labour Supply and Innovation, 1800–1860. The Boot and Shoe Industry’, Business History XII (1970).
R. A. Church, ‘The British Leather Industry and Foreign Competition 1870–1914’, Economic History Review, 2nd Ser., XXIV (1971).
R. A. Church, The History of the British Coal Industry, vol. 3: 1830–1913: Victorian Pre-eminence (Oxford, 1986).
J. H. Clapham, The Woollen and Worsted Industries (1907).
Archibald and Nan L. Clow, The Chemical Revolution. A Contribution to Social Technology (1952).
D. C. Coleman, The British Paper Industry, 1495–1860 (Oxford, 1958).
W. H. B. Court, The Rise of Midland Industries, 1600–1838 (1938).
Ian Donnachie, A History of the Brewing Industry in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1979).
Baron F. Duckham, History of the Scottish Coal Industry, vol. I, 1700–1815 (Newton Abbot, 1970).
M. M. Edwards, The Growth of the British Cotton Trade, 1780–1815 (Manchester, 1867).
Cyril Ehrlich, The Piano. A History (1976).
C. Hamilton Ellis, Nineteenth Century Railway Carriages (1949).
D. A. Farnie, The English Cotton Industry and World Markets, 1815–1896 (Oxford, 1979).
Michael Flinn, The History of the British Coal Industry, vol. 2, 1700–1830: The Industrial Revolution (1984).
Roderick Floud, The British Machine and Tool Industry, 1850–1914 (1976).
R. C. Floud, ‘The Adolescence of American Engineering Competition, 1860–1900’, Economic History Review, 2nd Ser., XXVII (1974).
J. H. Fox, ‘The Victorian Entrepreneur in Lancashire’ in S. P. Bell (ed.), Victorian Lancashire (Newton Abbot, 1976).
F. J. Glover, ‘The Rise of the Heavy Woollen Trade of the West Riding of Yorkshire in the Nineteenth Century’, Business History, IV (1961).
L. F. Haber, The Chemical Industry during the Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 1958).
Henry Hamilton, An Economic History of Scotland in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1963).
A. E. Harrison, ‘The Competitiveness of the British Cycle Industry, 1890–1914’, Economic History Review, 2nd Ser., XXII (1969).
A. E. Harrison, ‘Joint-stock Company Flotation in the Cycle, Motor-vehicle and Related Industries, 1882–1914’, Business History, XXIII (1981).
Elijah Helm, ‘The Alleged Decline of the British Cotton Industry’, Economic Journal, II (1892).
Pat Hudson, The Genesis of Industrial Capital. A Study of the West Riding wool Textile industry c.1750–1850 (1986).
Charles K. Hyde, Technological Change and the British Iron Industry 1700–1870 (Princeton, N.J., 1977).
J. B. Jefferys, Retail Trading in Britain, 1850–1950 (Cambridge, 1954).
D. J. Jenkins and K. G. Ponting, The British Wool Textile Industry, 1770–1914 (1982).
A. H. John, The Industrial Development of South Wales (Cardiff, 1950).
A. H. John and G. Williams (eds), Glamorgan Country History, vol. V, Industrial Glamorgan from 1700 to 1970 (Cardiff, 1980).
Haydn Jones, Accounting, Costing and Cost Estimation, Welsh Industry: 1700–1830 (Cardiff, 1985).
S. R. H. Jones, ‘Price Associations and Competition in the British Pin Industry, 1814–40’, Economic History Review, 2nd Ser., XXVI (1973).
William Lazonick, ‘Factor costs and the diffusion of ring-spinning in Britain prior to World War I’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, XCVI (1981).
William Lazonick, ‘Production Relations, Labour Productivity and Choice of Technique: British and US Cotton Spinning’, Journal of Economic History, XLI (1981).
William Lazonick, ‘Industrial Organisation and Technical Change: The Decline of the British Cotton Industry’, Business History Review, LXII (1983).
William Lazonick, ‘Rings and Mules in Britain: Reply [to Sandberg, 151]’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, XCIX (1984).
William Lazonick and William Mass, ‘The Performance of the British Cotton Industry, 1870–1913’, Research in Economic History, 9 (1984).
Bruce Lenman and Kathleen Donaldson, ‘Partners’ Incomes, Investment and Diversification in the Scottish Linen Area, 1850–1921’, Business History, XIII (1971).
Donald M. McCloskey, Economic Maturity and Entrepreneurial Decline: British Iron and Steel, 1870–1913 (Cambridge, Mass., 1973).
Neil McKendrick, ‘The Victorian View of the Midland Potteries’, Midland History, I (1971).
J. de L. Mann, The Cloth Industry in the West of Scotland from 1640 to 1880 (Oxford, 1971).
J. D. Marshall, Furness and the Industrial Revolution (Barrow, 1958).
R. C. Michie, Money, Mania and Markets. Investment, Company Formation and the Stock Exchange in Nineteenth-Century Scotland (Edinburgh, 1981).
W. E. Minchinton, The British Tinplate Industry: A History (Oxford, 1957).
Michael S. Moss and John R. Hume, Workshop of the British Empire. Engineering and Shipbuilding in the West of Scotland (1977).
A. E. Musson and E. Robinson, The Origins of Engineering in Lancashire’ Journal of Economic History, XX (1960).
T. R. Nevett, Advertising in Britain. A History (1982).
G. A. North, Teeside’s Economic Heritage (Cleveland, 1975).
J. L. Oliver, The Development and Structure of the Furniture Industry (1966).
T. G. Orsagh, ‘Progress in Iron and Steel: 1870–1913’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, III (1960–1).
P. L. Payne, Colvilles and the Scottish Steel Industry (Oxford, 1979).
D. C. M. Platt, Latin America and British Trade, 1806–1914 (1973).
Sidney Pollard. ‘British and World Shipbuilding, 1890–1914: A Study in Comparative Costs’, Journal of Economic History, XVII (1957).
Sidney Pollard and Paul Robertson, The British Shipbuilding Industry, 1870–1914 (Cambridge, Mass., 1979).
Arthur Redford, Manchester Merchants and Foreign Trade, 1794–1858 (Manchester, 1934).
Arthur Redford, Manchester Merchants and Foreign Trade, 1850–1939 (Manchester, 1956).
A. J. Robertson, ‘The Decline of the Scottish Cotton Industry’, Business History, XII (1970).
D. J. Rowe, Lead Manufacturing in Britain: A History (1983).
Lars G. Sandberg, ‘American Rings and English Mules: The Role of Economic Rationality’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, LXXXIII (1969).
Lars G. Sandberg, Lancashire in Decline. A Study in Entrepreneurship, Technology and International Trade (Columbus, Ohio, 1974).
Lars G. Sandberg, ‘The Remembrance of Things Past: Rings and Mules Revisited’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, XCIX (1984).
S. B. Saul, ‘The American Impact on British Industry, 1895–1914’, Business History, III (1960).
S. B. Saul, ‘The Motor Industry in Britain’ Business History, V (1962).
S. B. Saul, ‘The Market and Development of the Mechanical Engineering Industries in Britain, 1860–1914’, Economic History Review, 2nd Ser., XX (1967).
S. B. Saul, Research and Development in British Industry from the end of the Nineteenth Century to the 1960s’, in T. C. Smout (ed.), The Search for Wealth and Stability (1979).
G. R. Saxonhouse and G. Wright, ‘New Evidence on the Stubborn English Mule and the Cotton Industry, 1878–1920’, Economic History Review, 2nd Ser., XXXVII (1984).
Seymour Shapiro, Capital and the Cotton Industry (Ithaca, New York, 1967).
E. M. Sigsworth, ‘The West Riding Wool Textile Industry and the Great Exhibition’, Yorkshire Bulletin of Economic & Social Research, IV (1952).
Anthony Slaven, The Development of the West of Scotland (1975).
Roland Smith, The Lancashire Cotton Industry and the Great Depression, 1873–1896, Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Birmingham, 1954.
A. J. Taylor, ‘Concentration and Specialisation in the Lancashire Cotton Industry 1825–50’, Economic History Review, 2nd Ser., I (1949).
W. A. Thomas, The Provincial Stock Exchange (1973).
S. Timmins (ed.), The Resources, Products and Industrial History of Birmingham and the Midland Hardware District (1866).
Barrie Trinder, The Industrial Revolution in Shropshire (1973).
G. Turnbull, A History of the Calico Printing Industry of Great Britain (Altrincham, 1951).
R. H. Walters, The Economic and Business History of the South Wales Steam and Coal Industry, 1840–1914 (New York, 1977).
Kenneth Warren, Chemical Foundations: The Alkali Industry in Britain to 1926 (Oxford, 1980).
F. A. Wells, The British Hosiery Trade (1935).
O. M. Westall (ed.), The Historian and the Business of Insurance (Manchester, 1984).
III The Entrepreneur: Definition, Motivation, Recruitment and Role
H. G. H. Aitken, ‘The Future of Entrepreneurial Research’, Explorations in Enrepreneurial History, 2nd Ser., I (1963).
E. Ames and N. Rosenberg, ‘Changing Technological Leadership and Industrial Growth’, Economic Journal, LXXIII (1963).
T. S. Ashton, The Industrial Revolution (1948).
J. W. Atkinson and B. F. Hoselitz, ‘Entrepreneurship and Personalilty’, Explorations in Entrepreneurial History, X (1958).
Reinhard Bendix, Work and Authority in Industry. Ideologies of Management in the Course of Industrialisation (New York, 1956).
Reinhard Bendix, ‘A Study of Managerial Ideologies’, Economic Development and Cultural Change, V (1957).
N. M. Bradburn and D. E. Berlew, ‘Need for Achievement and English Industrial Growth’, Economic Development and Cultural Change, X (1961).
Mark Casson, The Entrepreneur. An Economic Theory (Oxford, 1982).
S. J. Chapman and F. J. Marquis, ‘The Recruiting of the Employing Classes from the Ranks of the Wage-Earners in the Cotton Industry’, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, LXXV (1912).
A. H. Cole, ‘An Approach to the Study of Entrepreneurship’ Journal of Economic History, VI Supplement (1946).
François Crouzet (ed.), Capital Formation in the Industrial Revolution (1972).
François Crouzet, The First Industrialists: The Problem of Origins (Cambridge, 1985).
Charlotte Erickson, British Industrialists: Steel and Hosiery, 1850–1950 (Cambridge, 1959).
G. H. Evans Jr., ‘The Entrepreneur and Economic Theory: A Historical and Analytical Approach’, American Economic Review, XXXIX (1949).
G. H. Evans Jr, ‘Business Entrepreneurs, Their Major Functions and Related Tenets’, Journal of Economic History, XIX (1959).
D. E. C. Eversley, ‘The Home Market and Economic Growth in England, 1750–1780’, in Land, Labour and Population in the Industrial Revolution. Essays Presented to J. D. Chambers (ed. E. L. Jones and G. Mingay) (1967).
M. W. Flinn, Origins of the Industrial Revolution (1966).
M. W. Flinn, ‘Social Theory and the Industrial Revolution’ in Social Theory and Economic Change (ed. T. Burns and S. B. Saul) (1967).
T. R. Gourvish, ‘A British Business Elite: the Chief Executive Managers of the Railway Industry, 1850–1923’ Business History Review, XLVII (1973).
E. E. Hagen, On the Theory of Social Change (Homewood, Illinois, 1964).
Leslie Hannah, Entrepreneurs and the Social Sciences: An Inaugural Lecture (1983).
R. M. Hartwell, ‘Business Management in England during the period of Early Industrialisation: Inducements and Obstacles’, in The Industrial Revolution (ed. R. M. Hartwell) (Oxford, 1970).
Charles E. Harvey, ‘Business History and the Problem of Entrepreneurship: The Case of the Rio Tinto Company, 1873–1939’, Business History, XXI (1979).
David Hey, The Rural Metalworkers of the Sheffield Region: A Study of Rural Industry Before the Industrial Revolution (Leicester, 1972).
Katrina Honeyman, Origins of Enterprise: Business Leadership in the Industrial Revolution (Manchester, 1982).
B. F. Hoselitz, ‘Entrepreneurship and Capital Formation in France and Britain since 1700’, in National Bureau of Economic Research, Capital Formation and Economic Growth (Princeton, 1956).
A. Howe, The Cotton Masters, 1830–1360 (Oxford, 1984).
Hester Jenkins and D. Caradog Jones, ‘Social Class of Cambridge University Alumni of the 18th and 19th Centuries’, British Journal of Sociology, I (1950).
David J. Jeremy (ed.), Dictionary of Business Biography, 5 vols (1984–86).
David J. Jeremy, ‘Anatomy of the British Business Elite, 1860–1980’, Business History, XXVI (1984) (based on the careers of 270 individuals in Volume I of the DBB, with surnames beginning with the letters A to C).
Peter Kilby (ed.), Entrepreneurship and Economic Development (New York, 1971).
Roy Lewis and Rosemary Stewart, The Boss, The Life and Times of the British Business Man (1961).
R. R. Locke, The End of the Practical Man: Entrepreneurship and Higher Education in Germany, France and Great Britain, 1880–1940 (1984).
D. C. McClelland, The Achieving Society (Princeton, New Jersey, 1961).
P. Mantoux, The Industrial Revolution in the Eighteenth Century (1923).
Robin Marris, The Economic Theory of ‘Managerial’ Capitalism (1964).
W. M. Mathew, ‘The Origins and Occupations of Glasgow Students, 1740–1839’, Past and Present, No. 33 (April 1966).
Edith Penrose, The Theory of the Growth of the Firm (Oxford, 1959).
Harold Perkin, The Origins of Modern English Society (1969).
S. Pollard, The Genesis of Modern Management (1965).
R. E. Pumphrey, ‘The Introduction of Industrialists into the British Peerage: A Study in Adaptation of a Social Institution’, American Historical Review, LXV (1959).
W. J. Reader, Professional Men (1966).
F. Redlich, ‘Economic Development, Entrepreneurship and Psychologism: A Social Scientist’s Critique of McClelland’s Achieving Society’, Explorations in Entrepreneurial History, 2nd Ser., I (1963).
W. D. Rubinstein, ‘The Victorian Middle Classes: Wealth, Occupation and Geography’, Economic History Review, 2nd Ser., XXX (1977).
W. D. Rubinstein, ‘Wealth, Elites and Class Structure in Britain’, Past and Present, No. 76 (1977).
W. D. Rubinstein, Wealth and the Wealthy in the Modern World (1980).
W. D. Rubinstein, Men of Property: The Very Wealthy in Britain since the Industrial Revolution (1981).
Michael Sanderson, The Universities and British Industry, 1850–1970 (1972).
Christine Shaw, ‘Characteristics of British Business Leaders: Findings from the Dictionary of Business Biography’ (based on a random sample of 188 cases taken from Volumes 1–4 (A-R) of the DBB [165a]). Paper presented to the Anglo-Japanese Conference on Business History, 1986, mimeo.
Anthony Slaven and Sydney Checkland (eds), Dictionary of Scottish Business Biography, Vol I: The Staple Industries (Aberdeen, 1986).
Aileen Smiles, Samuel Smiles and his Surroundings (1956).
Samuel Smiles, Self-Help, Centenary edition (1958).
Jennifer Tann, The Development of the Factory (1970).
E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (1963).
E. P. Thompson, ‘Time, Work-Discipline and Industrial Capitalism’, Past and Present, No. 38 (December 1967).
L. Urwick and E. F. L. Brech, The Making of Scientific Management 2 vols (1949).
G. Wilson, Gentlemen Merchants. The Merchant Community in Leeds, 1700–1830 (Manchester, 1972).
IV The Entrepreneur: General Assessments of Performance
D. H. Aldcroft, ‘The Entrepreneur and the British Economy, 1870–1914’, Economic History Review, 2nd Ser., XVII (1964).
D. H. Aldcroft, ‘Technical Progress and British Enterprise 1875–1914’, Business History, VIII (1966).
D. H. Aldcroft (ed.), The Development of British Industry and Foreign Competition, 1875–1914 (1968).
D. H. Aldcroft, ‘Investment in and Utilization of Manpower: Great Britain and her rivals, 1870–1914’, in Barrie M. Radcliffe (ed.), Great Britain and Her World, 1750–1914 (Manchester, 1975).
B. W. E. Alford, ‘Entrepreneurship, Business Performance and Industrial Development’, Business History, XIX (1977).
T. J. Byres, The Scottish Economy During the Great Depression, 1873–1896, unpublished B.Litt. thesis, University of Glasgow, 1962.
T. J. Byres, ‘Entrepreneurship in the Scottish Heavy Industries, 1870–1900’, in Studies in Scottish Business History, see [362] below.
D. C. Coleman, ‘Gentlemen and Players’, Economic History Review, 2nd Ser., XXVI (1973).
D. C. Coleman and Christine MacLeod, ‘Attitudes to New Techniques: British Businessmen, 1800–1950’, Economic History Review, 2nd Ser., XXXIX (1986).
H. G. Gray and Samuel Turner, Eclipse or Empire? (1916).
H. J. Habakkuk, American and British Technology in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 1962).
C. K. Harley, ‘Skilled Labour and the Choice of Technique in Edwardian Industry’, Explorations in Economic History, XI (1974).
Ross Hoffman, Great Britain and the German Trade Rivalry, 1875–1914 (Philadelphia, 1933).
D. S. Landes, ‘Entrepreneurship in Advanced Industrial Countries: The Anglo-German Rivalry’, in Entrepreneurship and Economic Growth. Papers presented at a Conference sponsored jointly by the Committee on Economic Growth of the Social Science Research Foundation and the Harvard University Research Centre in Entrepreneurial History, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 12–13 November 1954.
D. S. Landes, ‘Technological Change and Development in Western Europe, 1750–1914’, in The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, VI. The Industrial Revolutions and After, Part I (ed. H. J. Habakkuk and M. Postan) (Cambridge, 1965), subsequently reprinted and extended as The Unbound Prometheus (Cambridge, 1969).
D. S. Landes, ‘Factor Costs and Demand: Determinants of Economic Growth’, Business History, VII (1965).
A. L. Levine, Industrial Retardation in Britain, 1880–1914 (1967).
R. R. Locke, ‘New Insights from Cost Accounting into British Entrepreneurial Performance, c. 1914’, The Accounting Historians Journal, VI (1979).
R. R. Locke, ‘Cost Accounting: an Institutional Yardstick for Measuring British Entrepreneurial Performance, c. 1914’, The Accounting Historians Journal, VI (1979).
Donald N. McCloskey (ed.), Essays on a Mature Economy: Britain After 1840. Papers and Proceedings of the M.S.S.B. Conference on the New Economic History of Britain, 1840–1939 (1971).
Donald N. McCloskey and Lars G. Sandberg, ‘From Damnation to Redemption: Judgements on the Late Victorian Entrepreneur’, Explorations in Economic History, IX (1971).
Donald N. McCloskey, ‘Did Victorian Britain Fail?’, Economic History Review, 2nd Ser., XXIII (1970). See the later comment by N. F. R. Crafts and the reply by McCloskey, Economic History Review, 2nd Ser., XXXII (1979).
Joel Mokyr, ‘Prosperous Interlude’, Economic Development and Cultural Change, 30 (1982).
Stephen J. Nicholas, ‘Total Factor Productivity and the Revision of Post-1870 British Economic Growth’, Economic History Review, 2nd Ser. XXXV (1982).
Stephen J. Nicholas, ‘The Overseas Marketing Performance of British Industry, 1870–1914’, Economic History Review, 2nd Ser., XXXVII (1984).
Eric M. Sigsworth, ‘Some Problems in Business History, 1870–1914’, in Papers of the Sixteenth Business History Conference, ed. Charles J. Kennedy (Lincoln, Nebraska, 1969).
Martin J. Wiener, English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit, 1850–1980 (Cambridge, 1981).
Charles Wilson, ‘The Entrepreneur in the Industrial Revolution in Britain’, Explorations in Entrepreneurial History, III (1955).
Charles Wilson, ‘Economy and Society in Late Victorian Britain’, Economic History Review, 2nd Ser., XVIII (1965).
V Studies of Particular Firms and Entrepreneurs
J. B. Addis, The Crawshay Dynasty. A Study in Industrial Organisation and Development, 1756–1867 (Cardiff, 1967).
Anon. [various authors] Fortunes Made in Business, 3 vols (1884–7).
Anon. James Finlay and Company Ltd., Manufacturers and East India Merchants, 1750–1950 (Glasgow, 1957).
T.S. Ashton, ‘The Records of a Pin Manufacturer, 1814–21’, Economica, V (1925).
T. S. Ashton, An Eighteenth Century Industrialist: Peter Stubs of Warrington, 1756–1806 (Manchester, 1939).
T. C. Baxter, The Glassmakers, Pilkngton: 1826–1976 (1977).
J. N. Bartlett, ‘Alexander Pirie & Sons of Aberdeen and the Expansion of the British Paper Industry c. 1860–1914’, Business History, XXII (1980).
Rhodes Boyson, The Ashworth Cotton Enterprise. The Rise and Fall of a Family Firm, 1818–1880 (Oxford, 1970).
Asa Briggs, Wine for Sale: Victoria Wine and the Liquor Trade, 1860–1984 (1985)
R. H. Campbell, Carron Company (Edinburgh and London, 1961).
J. A. Cantell, James Nasmyth and the Bridgewater Foundry. A study of entrepreneuship in the early engineering industry (Manchester, 1984).
W. H. Chaloner, ‘Robert Owen, Peter Drinkwater and the Early Factory System in Manchester, 1788–1800’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, XXXVII (1954).
Dennis Chapman, ‘William Brown of Dundee, 1791–1864: Management in a Scottish Flax Mill, Explorations in Entrepreneurial History IV (1952).
S. D. Chapman, ‘The Peels in the Early English Cotton Industry’, Business History XI (1969).
S. D. Chapman, ‘James Longsdon (1745–1821), Farmer and Fustian Manufacturer: The Small Firm in the Early English Cotton Industry’, Textile History, I (1970).
Stanley Chapman, Jesse Boot of Boots the Chemists (1974).
S. G. Checkland, The Mines of Tharsis (1967).
S. G. Checkland, The Gladstones. A Family Biography, 1764–1851 (Cambridge, 1971).
R. A. Church, ‘An Aspect of Family Enterprise in the Industrial Revolution’, Business History, IV (1962).
R. A. Church, ‘Messrs Gotch & Sons and the Rise of the Kettering Footwear Industry’, Business History, VII (1966).
R. A. Church, Kenricks in Hardware. A Family Business, 1791–1966 (Newton Abbot, 1969).
Roy Church, Herbert Austin and the British Motor Car Industry to 1914 (1979).
D. C. Coleman, Courtaulds. An Economic and Social History, 3 vols (1969, 1980).
T. A. B. Corley, Quaker Enterprise in Biscuits: Huntley and Palmers of Reading, 1822–1972 (1972).
R. P. T. Davenport-Hines, Dudley Docker, The Life and Times of a Trade Warrior (Cambridge, 1984).
Ralph Davis, Twenty-One and a Half Bishop Lane: A History of J. H. Fenner & Co Ltd., 1861–1961 (1961).
I. L. Donnachie and J. Butt, ‘The Wilsons of Wilsontown Ironworks (1779–1813): A Study in Entrepreneurial Failure, Explorations in Entrepreneurial History, IV (1966–7).
D. A. Farnie, ‘John Rylands of Manchester’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, LVI (1973).
R. S. Fitton and A. P. Wadsworth, The Strutts and the Arkwrights, 1758–1830 (Manchester, 1958).
James Foreman-Peck, ‘Diversification and the Growth of the Firm: The Rover Car Company to 1914’, Business History, XXV (1983).
Edwin Green and Michael Moss, A Business of National Importance: The Royal Mail Shipping Group, 1902–1937 (1982).
Robert G. Greenhill, ‘The Royal Mail Steam Packet Company and the Development of Steamship Links with Latin America, 1875–1900’, Maritime History, II (1973).
A. E. Harrison, ‘F Hopper & Co — The Problems of Capital Supply in the Cycle Manufacturing Industry, 1891–1914’, Business History, XXIV (1982).
Charles E. Harvey, ‘Business History and the Problems of Entrepreneurship: The Case of the Rio Tinto Company, 1873–1939’, Business History, XXI (1979).
Charles E. Harvey, The Rio Tinto Company: An Economic History of a Leading International Mining Concern, 1873–1954 (Penzance, 1981).
H. Heaton, ‘Benjamin Gott and the Industrial Revolution in Yorkshire’, Economic History Review, III (1931–2).
John R. Hume and Michael S. Moss, Beardmore. The History of a Scottish Industrial Giant (1979).
F. E. Hyde assisted by J. R. Harris, Blue Funnel: A History of Alfred Holt and Company of Liverpool from 1865 to 1914 (Liverpool, 1956).
F. E. Hyde, Shipping Enterprise and Management, 1830–1939 (Liverpool, 1967).
R. J. Irving, ‘New Industries for Old? Some Investment Decisions of Sir W G Armstrong, Whitworth & Co Ltd., 1900–1914, Business History, XVII (1975).
A. H. John (ed.), The Walker Family, Ironfounders and Lead Manufacturers, 1741–1893 (1951).
A. H. John, A Liverpool Merchant House: Being the History of Alfred Booth and Company, 1863–1958 (1959).
S. R. H. Jones, ‘Hall English & Co., 1913–41. A Study of Entrepreneurial Response in the Gloucester Pin Industry’, Business History, XVIII (1976).
M. W. Kirby, Men of Business and Politics. The Rise and Fall of the Quaker Pease Dynasty of North-east England, 1700–1943 (1984).
C. H. Lee, A Cotton Enterprise, 1795–1840. A History of M’Connel and Kennedy, Fine Cotton Spinners (Manchester, 1972).
John C. Logan, ‘The Dumbarton Glass Works Company: A Study in Entrepreneurship’, Business History, XIV (1972).
Neil McKendrick, ‘Josiah Wedgwood: An Eighteenth-Century Entrepreneur in Salesmanship and Marketing Techniques’, Economic History Review, 2nd Ser., XII (1960).
Neil McKendrick, ‘Josiah Wedgwood and Factory Discipline’, Historical Journal, IV (1961).
Neil McKendrick, Josiah Wedgwood and the Factory System’, Proceedings of the Wedgwood Society, No. 5 (1963).
Neil McKendrick, ‘Josiah Wedgwood and Thomas Bentley: An Inventor-Entrepreneur Partnership in the Industrial Revolution’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, XIV (1964).
Neil McKendrick, ‘Josiah Wedgwood and Cost Accounting in the Industrial Revolution’, Economic History Review, 2nd Ser., XXIII (1970).
M. H. MacKenzie, ‘Cressbrook and Litton Mills, 1779–1835’, Derbyshire Archaeological Journal, LXXXVIII (1968).
Sheila Marriner, Rathbones of Liverpool, 1845–74 (Liverpool, 1961).
Sheila Marriner and Francis E. Hyde, The Senior: John Samuel Swire: 1825–98 (Liverpool, 1967).
John J. Mason, ‘A Manufacturing and Bleaching Enterprise during the Industrial Revolution: The Sykeses of Edgeley, Business History, XXIII (1981).
Peter Mathias, Retailing Revolution: A History of Multiple Retailing in the Food Trades based upon the Allied Supplies Group of Companies (1967).
Jocelyn Morton, Three Generations in a Family Textile Firm (1971).
Michael S. Moss, ‘William Todd Lithgow — Founder of a Fortune’, Scottish Historical Review, LXII (1983).
A. E. Musson, ‘An Early Engineering Firm: Peel, William & Co. of Manchester’, Business History, III (1960).
A. E. Musson, Enterprise in Soap and Chemicals, Joseph Crosfield & Sons Ltd., 1815–1965 (Manchester, 1965).
A. E. Musson, ‘Joseph Whitworth and the Growth of Mass-Production Engineering’, Business History, XVII (1975).
Robert Owen, The Life of Robert Owen, written by Himself, (1857).
P. L. Payne, Rubber and Railways in the Nineteenth Century (Liverpool, 1961).
S. Piggott, Hollins: A Study of Industry, 1784–1949, (Nottingham, 1949).
A. Raistrick, Dynasty of Iron Founders (Newton Abbot, 1970).
W. J. Reader, Imperial Chemical Industries, A History, vol. I, The Forerunners, 1870–1926 (1970).
W. J. Reader, A House in the City: A Study of the City and the Stock Exchange based on the records of Forster and Braithwaite, 1825–1975 (1985).
Goronwy Rees, St Michael: A History of Marks and Spencer (1969).
Sir Wemyss Reid, Memoirs and Correspondence of Lyon Playfair (1900).
H. W. Richardson and J. M. Bass, ‘The Profitability of Consett Iron Company Before 1914’, Business History, VII (1965).
W. G. Rimmer, Marshalls of Leeds, Flax Spinners, 1788–1886 (Cambridge, 1960)
A. J. Robertson, ‘Robert Owen, Cotton Spinner: New Lanark, 1800–1825’ in Robert Owen, Prophet of the Poor, ed. S. Pollard and J. Salt (1971).
Eric Robinson, ‘Boulton & Fothergill, 1762–1782, and the Birmingham Export of Hardware’, University of Birmingham Historical Journal, VII (1959).
Eric Robinson, ‘Eighteenth Century Commerce and Fashion: Matthew Boulton’s Marketing Techniques’, Economic History Review, 2nd Ser., XVI (1963).
E. Roll, An Early Experiment in Industrial Organisation, Being a History of Boulton and Watt, 1775–1805 (1930).
Mary Rose, ‘The Role of the Family in providing Capital and Managerial Talent in Samuel Greg & Co., 1784–1840’, Business History, XIX (1977).
Mary Rose, ‘Diversification of Investment by the Greg Family, 1800–1914’, Business History, XXI (1979).
Mary B. Rose, The Gregs of Quarry Bank Mill. The rise and decline of a family firm, 1750–1914 (Cambridge, 1986).
J. D. Scott, Vickers. A History (1962).
Eric M. Sigsworth, Black Dyke Mills (Liverpool, 1958).
A. Slaven, ‘A Glasgow Firm in the Indian Market: John Lean & Sons, Muslin Weavers’, Business History Review, XLIII (1969).
Roland Smith, ‘An Oldham Limited Liability Company, 1875–1896’ Business History, IV (1961).
G. B. Sutton, ‘The Marketing of Ready Made Footwear in the Nineteenth Century. A Study of the Firm of C. & J. Clark’, Business History, VI (1964).
G. B. Sutton, A History of Shoemaking in Street, Somerset: C. & J. Clark, 1833–1903 (1979).
Clive Trebilcock, The Vickers Brothers: Armaments and Enterprise, 1854–1914 (1977).
Clive Trebilcock, Phoenix Assurance and the Development of British Insurance, vol. I: 1782–1870 (Cambridge, 1986).
R. E. Tyson, The Sun Mill Company Limited: A Study in Democratic Investment, 1858–1959, unpublished M. A. Thesis, University of Manchester, 1962.
R. E. Tyson, ‘William Marcroft (1822–94) and the Limited Liability Movement in Oldham’, Transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society, 80 (1980).
David Wainwright, Broadwood by Appointment (1982).
R. A. Wells, Hollins and Viyella. A Study in Business History (Newton Abbot, 1968).
Charles Wilson, The History of Unilever, 2 vols (1954).
Charles Wilson, First with the News: A History of W. H. Smith, 1792–1972 (1985).
Charles Wilson and William Reader, Men and Machines. A History of D. Napier & Sons, Engineers Ltd., 1808–1858 (1958).
VI Guides to Business Archives and Business Histories
David Allen, ‘Surveys of Records in the British Isles’, Aslib Proceedings (1971).
T. C. Barker, R. H. Campbell, P. Mathias and B. S. Yamey, Business History, Rev. edn (1971).
Joyce M. Bellamy (ed.), Yorkshire Business Histories: A Bibliography (Bradford, 1970).
H. A. L. Cockerill and Edwin Green, The British Insurance Business, 1547–1970 (1976).
B. R. Crick and M. Alman, A Guide to Manuscripts Relating to America in Great Britain and Ireland (1961).
Charles Harvey, ‘Business Records at the Public Record Office’, Business Archives, No. 52 (November, 1986).
S. Horrocks, Lancashire Business Histories (Manchester, 1971).
Patricia Hudson, The West Riding Wool Textile Industry: A Catalogue of Business Records (Edlington, Wiltshire, 1975).
Joan Lane, Register of Business Records of Coventry and Related Areas (Coventry, 1977).
Jane Low, A Guide to Sources in the History of the Cycle and Motor Industries in Coventry, 1880–1939 (Coventry, 1982).
Sheila Marriner, ‘Company Financial Statements as Source Material for Business Historians’, Business History, XXII (1980).
P. Mathias and A. W. H. Pearsall (eds), Shipping: A Survey of Historical Records (Newton Abott, 1971).
E. R. J. Owen and Frank Dux, A List of the Location of Records belonging to British Firms and to British Businessmen active in the Middle East, 1800–1950 (Oxford: Middle East Centre, 1973).
P. L. Payne (ed.), Studies in Scottish Business History (1967).
L. S. Pressneil and J. Orbell (eds), A Guide to the Historical Records of British Banking (Aldershot, 1985).
T. Rath, ‘Business Records in the Public Record Office in the Age of the Industrial Revolution’, Business History, XVII (1975).
Lesley Richmond and Bridget Stockford, Company Archives. The Survey of the Records of 1000 of the First Registered Companies in England and Wales (Aldershot, 1986).
L. A. Ritchie, Modern British Shipbuilding. A Guide to Historical Records (Maritime Monographs and Reports, No.48, 1980).
R. A. Storey (ed.), Sources of Business History in the National Register of Archives: First Five-year Cumulation (Historical Manuscripts Commission, 1971).
Peter Walne (ed.), A Guide to Manuscript Sources for the History of Latin America and the Caribbean in the British Isles (1973).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1988 The Economic History Society
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Payne, P.L. (1988). British Entrepreneurship in the Nineteenth Century. In: Clarkson, L.A. (eds) The Industrial Revolution A Compendium. Studies in Economic and Social History. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-10936-4_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-10936-4_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-10938-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-10936-4
eBook Packages: Palgrave Economics & Finance CollectionEconomics and Finance (R0)