IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/bushst/v44y2002i1p21-46.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Inheritance and the Life-Cycle of Family Firms in the Early Industrial Revolution

Author

Listed:
  • A. Owens

Abstract

This article examines the impact of businessmen and businesswomen's inheritance strategies on the life-cycle of family firms in the early industrial revolution. Focusing on three key occupational groups - cotton manufacturers, tailors and drapers and publicans and brewers - in the industrialising town of Stockport over the first half of the nineteenth century, it demonstrates that inheritance was an important reason why many firms were 'closed'. Businesses were terminated to fund family provision strategies and to provide offspring with alienable legacies. It is suggested that such strategies led to both the recycling and eventual widening of business capital. More broadly, the article calls for business historians to assess and evaluate the strategies of small firms within the context of family ambitions and priorities, rather than against more abstract, economistic and potentially anachronistic notions of business performance.

Suggested Citation

  • A. Owens, 2002. "Inheritance and the Life-Cycle of Family Firms in the Early Industrial Revolution," Business History, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(1), pages 21-46.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:bushst:v:44:y:2002:i:1:p:21-46
    DOI: 10.1080/713999259
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/713999259
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/713999259?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Smith, Harry & Bennett, Robert J. & van Lieshout, Carry & Montebruno, Piero, 2020. "Households and entrepreneurship in England and Wales, 1851-1911," MPRA Paper 102647, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Sonia Baijot & Charlotte Le Chapelain, 2022. "Reassessing women’s participation in entrepreneurial activities in the nineteenth century: A review of the literature," Working Papers of BETA 2022-24, Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée, UDS, Strasbourg.
    3. Sonia Baijot & Charlotte Le Chapelain, 2022. "Reassessing women’s participation in entrepreneurial activities in the nineteenth century: A review of the literature," Working Papers 07-22, Association Française de Cliométrie (AFC).
    4. Nicola Visonà & Luca Riccetti, 2024. "Simulating the industrial revolution: a history-friendly model," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 19(4), pages 831-862, October.
    5. David r. Green & Alastair Owens, 2013. "Geographies of wealth: real estate and personal property ownership in England and Wales, 1870–1902," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 66(3), pages 848-872, August.
    6. Sonia Baijot & Charlotte Le Chapelain, 2022. "Reassessing Women’s Participation in Entrepreneurial Activities in the Nineteenth Century: A Review of the Literature [Réévaluer la participation des femmes aux activités entrepreneuriales au dix-n," Post-Print hal-03932307, HAL.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:bushst:v:44:y:2002:i:1:p:21-46. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/FBSH20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.