Stanley Chapman, Chapman Stanley

Merchant Enterprise in Britain

From the Industrial Revolution to World War I

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Studies of the British Industrial Revolution and of the Victorian period of economic and social development have until very recently concentrated on British industries and industrial regions, while commerce and finance, and particularly that of London, have been substantially neglected. This has distorted our view of the process of change because financial services and much trade continued to be centred on the metropolis, and the south-east region never lost its position at the top of the national league of wealth. This is a pioneer survey of the mercantile sector of the economy from the end of the eighteenth century to World War I. It complements Dr. Chapman's The Rise of Merchant Banking (1984), concentrating on the various ways in which British merchants responded to the unprecedented opportunities of the Industrial Revolution and the growth of the British Empire. The main conclusion is that industrial entrepreneurs contributed only briefly to merchant ventures, and that with limited success. Rather did the established merchant community evolve its own new forms of enterprise to meet the changing opportunities: the 'new frontier' merchant networks of the Atlantic economy, the international houses in continental trade, the agency houses in the Far East, and the home trade houses dominating the domestic market. These resilient organisations enabled the British merchant enterprise to survive longer and in greater strength than in other Western economies.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Cambridge University Press
• Seitenzahl: 356
• Erscheinungstermin: 11. Dezember 2003
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 235mm x 157mm x 25mm
• Gewicht: 731g
• ISBN-13: 9780521351782
• ISBN-10: 0521351782
• Artikelnr.: 22196533

Inhaltsangabe

List of figures
List of tables
Preface
Abbreviations used in the footnotes
Introduction: approaches and concepts
Part I. The Setting: 1. The eighteenth-century structure of merchant enterprise
2. The consequences of the Industrial Revolution and the French wars
Part II. New Streams of Enterprise: 3. Merchants in the Atlantic trade
4. The agency houses: trade to India and the far East
5. The international houses: the foreign contribution to British mercantile enterprise
6. The home trade houses
Part III. Response to Instant Communication: 7. Problems of restructuring mercantile enterprise
8. British-based investment groups before 1914
9. Imperialism and British trade
Part IV. Conclusions: 10. Performance of british mercantile enterprise
Manuscript sources
Index of firms and people
Index of plates
Index of subjects.