This article examines small and medium-sized scrap and wastepaper enterprises in Finland. They operated in the margins of the nation’s industrial economy during the twentieth century but pioneered many of the business models and practices that, in the last few decades, have become crucial elements of the circular economy. We study why and how they tried to develop profitable business models, and why some succeeded while others failed. We give particular attention to the business environment where they operated and argue that legislation, values, purchasing cartels, and other outside factors had a crucial impact on their profitability. We base our analysis partly on published company histories and other earlier research and partly on interviews and the extensive and usually open collections of business archives. Those sources provide us with the often-lacking inside view of small and medium-sized enterprises in the circular economy business and show how determined these companies were to defend their interests.

This article examines China’s outward investment in the European automotive industry since the late twentieth century. By mapping and analyzing the main investment operations, we argue that private companies played a key role in the internationalization of the Chinese automotive sector. Chinese state-owned enterprises took part, especially in the initial stages of international expansion. Our contribution also analyzes the pattern of internationalization followed by Chinese companies, arguing that it differed from the one followed by well-established automotive firms in advanced economies during previous decades. The findings reveal that achieving the most advanced technology was the key driver of outward investment decisions. However, Chinese investors’ strategy was not uniform; it was flexible and varied significantly depending on the European country and the size of the company targeted. Furthermore, Chinese government industrial policies greatly influenced the international strategies of both state-owned and private companies, particularly the “Go Out” policy.

In the 1960s, the optimal size of integrated steel plants significantly increased, while small steel mills known as minimills were gaining ground in the sector. Based on the use of scrap and electricity, these small plants became an alternative technological model to blast furnace steelmaking. Among the major European steel nations, Italy and Spain stood out for the early adoption and significant participation of electric furnaces in total steel production. The article explains the factors that led to the proliferation of small independent steel mills and their subsequent transformation into minimills in these Mediterranean countries. The conclusion is that, despite the different institutional frameworks, the Italian and Spanish response to the steel shortage of the 1950s was similar. This led to the emergence of many small producers, which based their development on low installation costs. In Italy, these businesses leveraged the opportunities of the postwar economic miracle, had access to a favorable supply of raw materials due to the policy of the High Authority of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), and were able to resiliently face the restructuring process of the 1980s led by the Commission of the European Communities (EC). In Spain, they took advantage of strong state intervention.

This article examines Mahindra & Mohammed (now Mahindra & Mahindra) and the Muhammadi Steamship Company through a microhistory of late colonial Bombay. The paper reveals companies committed to the economic unity of India shortly before the anticolonial struggle culminated in the violent and chaotic Partition of British India in August 1947. In Bombay, the center of Indian industry and not typically associated with the Partition’s dislocations, economic partition was unanticipated even by economic actors closely allied with the Muslim League. The two firms examined here highlight the understudied impact of decolonization and the Partition of the sub-continent on Indian capitalism, and suggests that postcolonial territorial realities implied an economic rearticulation that has often been overlooked.

Much of the history of Indian businesses and merchants outside the subcontinent has emphasized the role of specific trading groups that created and utilized ties with India. The rise of Trinidad’s Indian shopkeepers tells an alternative story: former labor migrants turned to commerce. Indentured labor formed the connection between India and Trinidad, an area outside traditional Indian merchant activity. Trinidad’s organic Indian business community arose owing to the absence of traditional trading groups in the immigrant population, the large distance from India, and the growth of the Indian population that in turn demanded services. Shopkeepers came disproportionately from upper castes, who possibly relied on their greater social status and new network ties in Trinidad. However, shopkeepers did not rise into the upper echelons of commerce. This break shows the limits of traditional Indian traders in establishing ties in the farthest reaches of the British Empire.