Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

A History of Socially Responsible Business, c.1600–1950 pp 157–188Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

The Distant Shareholder: Attenuated Investment and the Diffusion of Social Concerns

  • Chapter
  • First Online:

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in the History of Finance ((PSHF))

Abstract

This chapter explores the development of a “nation of shareholders” in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It considers how and why investor expanded their range of investments from local to regional and from national to international. In particular, the chapter explores the increasing importance of investment in this period through the lens of geography, focussing on the relationship between distance, shareholding, and supply and demand for securities, both domestic, colonial and foreign. It then examines some of the implications that the geography of shareholding raises for understanding both individual investor behaviour and its impact on corporate governance.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   139.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   179.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD   179.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

References

  • Acheson, Graeme, and John Turner. “The Death Blow to Limited Liability in Victorian Britain: The City of Glasgow Failure.” Explorations in Economic History 45 (2008): 235–53.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barber, Brad, and Terrance O’Dean. “Boys Will Be Boys: Gender, Overconfidence, and Common Stock Investment.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 116, no. 1 (2001): 261–92.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Beeton, Samuel. Beeton’s Guide to the Stock Exchange and Money Market. London: Ward, Lock and Tyler, 1870.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bennett, Arnold. Anna of the Five Towns. London: Chatto & Windus, 1902.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cairncross, Alexander. Home and Foreign Investment, 1870–1930. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953.

    Google Scholar 

  • Clapham, John. An Economic History of Modern Britain, Machines and National Rivalries, 1887–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1938.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cook, Chris, and John Stevenson. The Longman Handbook of Modern British History, 1714–1995. London: Addison Wesley Longman, 1996.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cottrell, Philip. Industrial Finance 1830–1914. London: Methuen, 1980.

    Google Scholar 

  • Creighton, Louise. “Women and Finance.” Financial Review of Reviews 59 (1910).

    Google Scholar 

  • Crozier, J. B. Notes on the First Principles of Investment. London: Financial Review of Reviews, 1910.

    Google Scholar 

  • Davis, Lance E., and Robert A. Huttenback. “The Political Economy of British Imperialism: Measures of Benefit and Support.” Journal of Economic History 42 (1982): 119–30.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Delany, Paul. Literature, Money and the Market. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.

    Google Scholar 

  • Edelstein, Michael. “Realized Rates of Return of UK Home and Overseas Portfolio Investment in the Age of High Imperialism.” Explorations in Economic History 13, no. 3 (1976): 283–330.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Edelstein, Michael. Overseas Investment in the Age of High Imperialism: The United Kingdom, 1850–1914. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982.

    Google Scholar 

  • Essex-Crosby, Ann. “Joint Stock Companies in Great Britain 1890–1930.” Unpublished thesis, University of London, 1938.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foreman-Peck, James, and Leslie Hannah. “Extreme Divorce: The Managerial Revolution in UK Companies Before 1914.” Economic History Review 65, no. 4 (2012): 1217–38.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Forster, E. M. Howards End. 1910. Reprint, London: Edward Arnold, 1973.

    Google Scholar 

  • Galsworthy, John. The Forsyte Saga, Volume I: The Man of Property. 1906. Reprint, Ware: Wordsworth, 2001.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goetzmann, William, and Andrey Ukhov. “British Investment Overseas 1870–1913: A Modern Portfolio Theory Approach.” Review of Finance 10 (2006): 261–300.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Green, David R., Alastair Owens, Josephine Maltby, and Janette Rutterford. “Lives in the Balance? Gender, Age and Assets in Late-Nineteenth-Century England and Wales.” Continuity and Change 24, no. 2 (2007): 307–35.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Green, David R., Alastair Owens, Claire Swan, and Carry van Lieshout. “Assets of the Dead: Wealth, Investment, and Modernity in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century England and Wales.” In Men, Women and Money, edited by David R. Green, Janette Rutterford and Josephine Maltby, 54–80. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

    Google Scholar 

  • Grossman, Richard. “New Indices of British Equity Prices, 1870–1913.” Journal of Economic History 62, no. 1 (2002): 121–46.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harrison, A. E. “Joint-Stock Company Flotation in the Cycle, Motor-Vehicle and Related Industries, 1882–1914.” Business History 23, no. 2 (1981): 165–90.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Van Helten, Jean Jacques. “Mining, Share Manias and Speculation: British Investment in Overseas Mining, 1880–1913.” In Capitalism in a Mature Economy: Financial Institutions, Capital Exports and British Industry 1870–1939, edited by Jean Jacques Van Helten and Youssef Cassis, 159–85. London: Aldershot, 1990.

    Google Scholar 

  • Henry, Nancy. George Eliot and the British Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Jefferys, J. B. Business Organization in Great Britain 1856–1914. New York: Ayer, 1977.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hannah, Leslie. “The ‘Divorce’ of Ownership from Control from 1900 Onwards: Recalibrating Imagined Global Trends.” Business History 49, no. 4 (2007): 404–38.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Klovland, Jan Tore. “Pitfalls in the Estimation of the Yield on British Consols, 1850–1914.” Journal of Economic History 54, no. 1 (1994): 164–87.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lowenfeld, Henry. Investment: An Exact Science. London: Financial Review of Reviews, 1907.

    Google Scholar 

  • Maltby, Josephine, and Janette Rutterford. “Investing in Charities in the Nineteenth Century: The Financialization of Philanthropy.” Accounting History Review 21, no. 2–3 (2016): 263–80.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Michie, Ranald. “The London Stock Exchange and the British Securities Market, 1850–1914.” Economic History Review 38 (1985): 61–82.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. The London Stock Exchange: A History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. The London and New York Stock Exchanges, 1850 to 1914. Abingdon: Routledge, 2011.

    Google Scholar 

  • Morgan, Victor, and W. A. Thomas. The Stock Exchange. London: Elek Books, 1962.

    Google Scholar 

  • Newton, Lucy, and Philip Cottrell. “Joint-Stock Banking in the English Provinces 1826–1857: To Branch or Not to Branch.” Business and Economic History 27, no. 1 (1998): 115–28.

    Google Scholar 

  • Platt, Desmond. “British Portfolio Investment Overseas Before 1870: Some Doubts.” Economic History Review 33, no. 1 (1980): 1–16.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pollard, Sidney. “Capital Exports, 1870–1914: Harmful or Beneficial?” Economic History Review 38, no. 4 (1985): 489–514.

    Google Scholar 

  • Porter, Dilwyn. “‘Trusted Guide of the Investing Public’: Harry Marks and the Financial News 1884–1916.” Business History 28, no. 1 (1986), 1–17.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Powell, Ellis. The Mechanism of the City. London: P. S. King & Son, 1910.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. “The Democratisation of Investment.” Financial Review of Reviews, September 1919.

    Google Scholar 

  • Robb, George. “Ladies of the Ticker: Women, Investment, and Fraud in England and America, 1850–1930.” In Victorian Investments: New Perspectives on Finance and Culture, edited by Nancy Henry and Cannon Schmitt, 120–40. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2009.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rutterford, Janette. “The Shareholder Voice: British and American Accents 1890–1965.” Enterprise & Society 13, no. 1 (2012): 120–53.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rutterford, Janette, and Josephine Maltby. “Frank Must Marry Money: Men, Women, and Property in Trollope’s Novels.” Accounting Historians Journal 33, no. 2 (2006): 169–99.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rutterford, Janette, and Josephine Maltby. “‘The Widow, the Clergyman and the Reckless’: Women Investors in England, 1830–1914.” Feminist Economics 12, no. 1–2 (2006): 111–38.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rutterford, Janette, Josephine Maltby, David R. Green, and Alastair Owens. “Researching Shareholding and Investment in England and Wales: Approaches, Sources and Methods.” Accounting History 14, no. 3 (2009): 269–92.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rutterford, Janette, and Dimitris P. Sotiropoulos. “Individual Investors and Portfolio Diversification in Late Victorian Britain: How Influential Were Early Diversification Ideas?” European Journal of the History of Economic Thought 23, no. 6 (2016): 919–45.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rutterford, Janette, Dimitris P. Sotiropoulos, and Carry Van Lieshout. “Individual Investors and Local Bias in the UK, 1870 to 1935.” Economic History Review (forthcoming).

    Google Scholar 

  • Sears, John. The New Place of the Stockholder. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1929.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stacey, Herbert. Stacey’s Guide to Stock Exchange Investment. London: The Basing Syndicate, 1923.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thomas, William. The Provincial Stock Exchanges. London: Frank Cass, 1973.

    Google Scholar 

  • Turner, John. “Wider Share Ownership? Investors in English and Welsh Bank Shares in the Nineteenth Century.” Economic History Review 62, no. S1 (2009), 167–92.

    Google Scholar 

  • Withers, Henry. “The Best Market for Capital.” Financial Review of Reviews 36 (1908).

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Open University, Milton Keynes, UK

    Janette Rutterford

Authors
  1. Janette Rutterford
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Janette Rutterford .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of History, University of Kent, Canterbury, United Kingdom

    William A Pettigrew

  2. Department of History, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

    David Chan Smith

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2017 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Rutterford, J. (2017). The Distant Shareholder: Attenuated Investment and the Diffusion of Social Concerns. In: Pettigrew, W., Smith, D. (eds) A History of Socially Responsible Business, c.1600–1950. Palgrave Studies in the History of Finance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60146-5_7

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60146-5_7

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-60145-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-60146-5

  • eBook Packages: Economics and FinanceEconomics and Finance (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation