Merchant Enterprise in Britain: From the Industrial Revolution to World War I

by Stanley Chapman

Overview

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, since 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521351782
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	04/16/1992
Pages:	356
Product dimensions:	6.26(w) x 9.33(h) x 1.18(d)

Table of Contents

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.