Research by economic historians into new forms of business organisation in the nineteenth century has cast the British role in a poor light. The British had shown little enthusiasm for joint-stock organisation for much of the century or for the credit-mobilier type of financing of industrial development. The multinational corporation was, it appears, largely an American phenomenon, with only late and limited indigenous development in Britain. The multidivisional corporation was again entirely a creation of American managerial creativity. The trust was, as we have long known, an outcome of German dynamism. Even the British banking scene continued to be dominated by family dynasties, while overseas investment in business enterprise, both colonial and foreign, was more restrained than historians had long thought. The consequence appears to be that the small-to-middling business remained the most characteristic form of enterprise, even in the ‘leading sectors’, for longer than the early writers led us to suppose. In a wide range of manufacturing and service industries the characteristic structure featured a multiplicity of diverse specialists whose leadership was addicted to family and (if possible) dynastic control.

The evidence for this situation has been extensively researched and is quite convincing. Yet, so far as the British position in the world economy is concerned, some misgivings must be allowed to surface.