Foreign Investment in Australia Before World War One

During the century following the Napoleonic Wars, the volume of investment funds crossing national borders rose substantially. Surplus savings in the more advanced European nations found a use in other countries, a mix of lending to governments and investments in a variety of private businesses (Hobson 1914; 1963; Jenks 1927; 1971; Baster 1929, 1935; Feis 1930; 1961; Lewis 1938; Cairncross 1953; Simon 1967; Stone 1999; Cassis 2010; Esteves 2008). The wider context for this increase in foreign lending and borrowing was the emergence of a global economy in which a growing number of countries participated in inter-country and inter-continental flows of capital, migrants and commodities. Produce from vast tracts of forest, agricultural and pastoral land, and mineral deposits outside of Europe entered international markets. Trade in basic commodities overtook trade in luxury goods such as furs and spices to such an extent that markets in many food products and materials such as tin, rubber, fibres and metals were largely integrated by the end of the century (O’Rourke & Williamson 1999; Topik & Wells 2012; Fitzgerald 2015).