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Imperial Schemes: Empire and the Rise of the British Business-State, 1914–1939

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2023

Ian Kumekawa
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Abstract

During and after World War I, British businessmen made major inroads in political, administrative, and policymaking circles. In so doing, they forged a nexus of power, the business-state, that aligned the interests of big business with the state’s imperial aspirations. Well before the widespread acceptance of the concept of the national economy, there was a common understanding in London that what was good for British business, especially industry, was good for the economic health of the country and empire. The result was that after World War I, the state aggressively helped British commercial interests.

Keywords

business-government relationsnetworksUKimperialism
Type
Krooss Prize Dissertation Summaries
Information
Enterprise & Society , Volume 23 , Issue 4 , December 2022 , pp. 928 - 937
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Business History Conference. All rights reserved.

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References

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Lloyd, E. M. H. Experiments in State Control. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924.Google Scholar
Salter, Arthur. Allied Shipping Control: An Experiment in International Administration. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1921.Google Scholar
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Thévoz, Seth Alexander. Club Government: How the Early Victorian World Was Ruled from London Clubs. London: I. B. Taurus, 2018.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tomlinson, Jim. Managing the Economy, Managing the People. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barreyre, Nicolas, and Lemercier, Claire. “The Unexceptional State: Rethinking the State in the Nineteenth Century (France, United States).” American Historical Review 126, no. 2 (June 2021): 481–503.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beckert, Sven. “American Danger: United States Empire, Eurafrica, and the Territorialization of Industrial Capitalism, 1870-1950.” The American Historical Review 122, no. 4 (October 2017): 1137–1170.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Broadberry, Stephen, and Howlett, Peter. “The United Kingdom during World War I: Business as Usual?” In The Economics of World War I, edited by Broadberry, Stephen and Harrison, Mark, 206–234. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kumekawa, Ian. “Meat and Economic Expertise in the British Imperial State During the First World War.” The Historical Journal 62, no. 1 (March 2019): 171–194.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kwak, James. “Cultural Capture and Financial Crisis.” In Preventing Regulatory Capture, edited by Carpenter, Daniel and Moss, David A., 71–98. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Lasswell, Harold D. “The Garrison State.” American Journal of Sociology 46, no. 4 (January 1941): 455–468.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rothschild, Emma. “Isolation and Economic Life in Eighteenth-Century France.” American Historical Review 119, no. 4 (October 2014): 1055–1082.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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Business Week Google Scholar
Report to the Board of Trade by the Committee Appointed to Investigate the Question of Financial Facilities for Trade. Cd. 8346. London: HMSO, 1916.Google Scholar
The National Archives (TNA), London.Google Scholar