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Merchants to Multinationals: British Trading Companies in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Author

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  • Jones, Geoffrey

    (Geoffrey Jones is Joseph C. Wilson Professor of Business Administration, Department of Entrepreneurial Management, Harvard Business School)

Abstract

Merchants to Multinationals examines the evolution of multinational trading companies from the eighteenth century to the present day. During the Industrial Revolution, British merchants established overseas branches which became major trade intermediaries and subsequently engaged in foreign direct investment. Complex multinational business groups emerged controlling large investments in natural resources, processing, and services in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. While theories of the firm predict the demise over time of merchant firms, this book identifies the continued resilience of British trading companies despite the changing political and business environments of the twentieth century. Like Japanese trading companies, they 're-invented' themselves in successive generations. The competences of the trading companies resided in their information-gathering, relationship-building, human resource, and corporate governance systems. This book provides a new dimension to the literature on international business through the focus on multinational service firms and its evolutionary approach based on confidential business records.

Suggested Citation

  • Jones, Geoffrey, 2002. "Merchants to Multinationals: British Trading Companies in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199249992.
    • Handle: RePEc:oxp:obooks:9780199249992
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    Cited by:

    1. Kojo S. Amanor, 2019. "Global Value Chains and Agribusiness in Africa: Upgrading or Capturing Smallholder Production?," Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy, Centre for Agrarian Research and Education for South, vol. 8(1-2), pages 30-63, April.
    2. Grazia Ietto-Gillies, 2011. "The Integration and Fragmentation Roles of Transnational Companies," Chapters, in: Miroslav N. Jovanović (ed.), International Handbook on the Economics of Integration, Volume III, chapter 3, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    3. Khadija Straaten & Rajneesh Narula & Elisa Giuliani, 2023. "The multinational enterprise, development, and the inequality of opportunities: A research agenda," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 54(9), pages 1623-1640, December.
    4. Sam Jones & Peter Gibbon, 2022. "What drove the profitability of colonial firms?: Labour coercion and trade preferences on the Sena Sugar Estates (1920-74)," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2022-70, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    5. Christos N. Pitelis & David J. Teece, 2010. "Cross-border market co-creation, dynamic capabilities and the entrepreneurial theory of the multinational enterprise," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 19(4), pages 1247-1270, August.
    6. Grazia Ietto-Gillies, 2011. "Strategies of Transnational Companies in the Context of the Governance Systems of Nation-states," Chapters, in: Mehmet Ugur & David Sunderland (ed.), Does Economic Governance Matter?, chapter 5, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    7. Ilgaz Arikan & Oded Shenkar, 2022. "Neglected elements: What we should cover more of in international business research," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 53(7), pages 1484-1507, September.

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