The Emergence of Multinational Enterprise : American Business Abroad from the Colonial Era to 1914 / Mira Wilkins.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wilkins, Mira, author.

Series:

Harvard Studies in Business History.

Harvard Studies in Business History

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

International business enterprises.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiii, 297 pages).

Edition:

Re-issue

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 2013.

Summary:

The first history of the involvement of American business in direct foreign investment explores a number of pertinent questions: What was the genesis of U.S. business interests in overseas markets? What perspectives guided the financial and social policies of the pioneering companies? In what way did the activities of American business abroad influence U.S. foreign policy?Mira Wilkins recounts the histories of early foreign investment by such familiar companies as Singer, United Fruit, Edison, American Smelting and Refining, Anaconda Copper, American Telephone, and International Harvester. Refuting a well-established myth, she demonstrates that early American foreign investment was not confined to the extractive industries and utilities, and shows that, by 1914, while America remained a debtor nation in international accounts, a large number of U.S. multinational manufacturing corporations had already come into existence. Indeed, the percentage of the 1914 gross national product attributed to direct foreign investment equals that percentage of the 1966 GNP.Though wholly self-contained, this works joins with the author’s subsequent volume, The Maturing of Multinational Enterprise: American Business Abroad from 1914 to 1970, to form the first overall history of American business abroad from our earliest times to the late twentieth century.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Tables

Preface

Acknowledgments

One. The Early Years

I. The Trader Becomes an Investor

II. New Stakes Abroad (1800-1860)

Two. International Business

III. The Appearance of Modern International Business (1865-1892)

IV. Factors Influencing the Growth of American Business Abroad (1893-1914)

V. Expanding Abroad (1893-1914)

Three. The Western Hemisphere

VI. The "Spillover" to Mexico (1876-1914)

VII. The "Spillover" to Canada (1870-1914)

VIII. The "Spillover" to the Caribbean (1870-1914)

IX. The South American Experience

Four. Summation

X. The Status of American International Enterprise in 1914

Bibliography

Notes

Index

Notes:

Description based on: online resource; title from PDF information screen (de gruyter, viewed November 20, 2022).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0-674-86299-6

OCLC:

1343104895