Government intervention in the British gas industry, 1948 to 1970

This article analyses government–industry relations in the nationalised British gas industry in the 1950s and 1960s. New archival research suggests that the government exercised a relatively benign influence on the gas industry in this period. The gas industry was provided with adequate funds for investment, its pricing strategies were not seriously affected by macroeconomic policy interventions, and it was allowed an unconstrained choice in its use of raw materials, even though its switch to oil feedstocks exacerbated the decline of the indigenous British coal industry. This relatively favourable assessment of the impact of government policy on the gas industry contrasts rather sharply with evidence from some of the other nationalised industries which have been investigated by historians. The implication is that we need to consider government intervention in the nationalised industries on a case-by-case basis rather than reaching for simple generalisations about the sector as a whole.     

Douglas A. Farnie and David J. Jeremy, eds. The Fibre That Changed the World: The Cotton Industry in International Perspective, 1600-1990s. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2004. xxxiv + 614 pp. ISBN 0-19-925566-0, $185.00 (cloth).

This volume sets a new yardstick for future research on thecotton industry, from early modern times to the present. Theeditors have brought an international perspective to a researcharea too long dominated by national or regional studies. Therehave been excellent comparative studies in the past, but thisvolume is distinguished by its unwavering commitment to studythe volume and means of exchanges and technology transfer acrossborders and oceans. With the exception of     

JoAnne Yates. Structuring the Information Age: Life Insurance and Technology in the Twentieth Century. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins Press, 2005. x + 351 pp. ISBN 0-8018-8086-6, $49.95.

Structuring the Information Age delineates the incorporationof the computer into the life insurance bureaucracy and howlife insurance affected the rise of computers. The life insuranceindustry is an excellent choice for a study of how informationtechnology ‘revolutions’ actually are incrementallyappropriated by enterprises and society. Insurance as a financialintermediary depends on information for its existence. Changesin information manipulation fundamentally affect managementpractice. Moreover, it was a large market for producers of businessmachines. The industry     

Brenda Collins and Philip Ollerenshaw, eds. The European Linen Industry in Historical Perspective. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. xxv + 334 pp. ISBN 0-19-925565-2, $95.00 (cloth).

The linen industry has not attracted nearly as much interestfrom economic and business historians as has the cotton industry.In large measure, this reflects cotton’s central rolein the industrial revolutions in Britain and elsewhere, as wellas cotton’s importance to the history of the southernUnited States. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,the linen industry struggled to compete with the cotton (andwool) industries.     

Victor J. Tremblay and Carol Horton Tremblay. The U.S. Brewing Industry: Data and Economic Analysis. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005. xiv + 379 pp. ISBN 0-262-20151-8, $40.00 (cloth).

The brewing industry does not appear to have attracted the sameresponse from business historians in the United States thatit has in countries such as Britain, where there have been severalauthoritative monographs. This book is therefore welcome. Writtenby the leading economists of American brewing, Victor J. Tremblayand Carol Horton Tremblay, it provides a comprehensive and analyticaloverview of the industry in the modern period. After setting out the general demand and cost     

Liberalisation and Competition in UK Energy Markets: the Spur to Innovate

This article assesses the main issues for the energy industry over the next decade, and particularly for the British gas industry. Supporting a carbon tax as a way of counteracting market trends towards lower energy prices, the author argues that the agreements at the Kyoto summit will lead, within a decade, to "an effective framework for restricting greenhouse gases". He welcomes the British Government's recent consultative document on utility regulation and calls for the gas industry to provide serious analysis to allay concerns about diversity of supply in Britain. He foresees accelerating liberalisation in the EU, based not on central agreement but on a Jeffersonian process whereby regulatory changes in one EU state lead to pressure for similar changes in neighbouring states. He concludes by speculating about the energy industry's equivalent of the PC or mobile phone.     

Robin Pearson. Insuring the Industrial Revolution: Fire Insurance in Great Britain, 1700-1850. Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2004. xiii + 434 pp. ISBN 0-7546-336302, $99.95 (cloth).

Robin Pearson’s Insuring the Industrial Revolution providesa richly detailed account of the British fire insurance industrythrough the mid-nineteenth century. Whereas most previous accountshave focused on single companies, Pearson’s study encompassesthe entire industry of London and provincial firms and seeksto place the industry within the larger context of British economichistory. British economic historians have long overlooked the contributionof insurance, and service industries in general, to the nation’seconomic     

Peter H. Spitz, ed. The Chemical Industry at the Millennium: Maturity, Restructuring, and Globalization. Philadelphia, Pa.: Chemical Heritage Foundation, 2003. x + 387 pp. ISBN 0-941901-34-3, $45.00 (cloth).

Peter Spitz’s new book is a continuation of his earlierwork, Petrochemicals: The Rise of an Industry (1988), whichdetailed the development of the modern chemical industry beginningin the 1930s. The Chemical Industry at the Millennium picksup the story at the end of the 1970s and examines the momentouschanges that have taken place in the last twenty-five years.Subtitled Maturity, Restructuring, and Globalization, this isan excellent collection of essays by industry     

Dwayne R. Winseck and Robert M. Pike. Communication and Empire: Media, Markets, and Globalization, 1860-1930

Dwayne Winseck and Robert Pike present a wide-ranging studyof communications technologies, global media, and the growthof international cable and wireless telecommunications providersin Communication and Empire: Media, Markets, and Globalization,1860–1930. Over the course of ten chapters, Winseck, aprofessor of media studies at Carleton College, and Pike, ProfessorEmeritus of Sociology at Queen's University, uncover the complexorigins of the international telecommunications industry inthe mid-nineteenth century, and explore its growing influenceover commerce, information     

Richard E. Caves. Switching Channels: Organization and Change in TV Broadcasting. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005. ix + 360 pp. ISBN: 0-674-01878-8, $39.95 (paper).

Economist Richard Caves has taken on the daunting task of explaininghow and why the U.S. television "industry" produces what itdoes. He does this, notably, by treating public policy and contentcriticism—the themes prevalent in most scholarship ontelevision issues—as two among numerous other explanatoryfactors. His approach is decidedly that of an economist, nota historian, so his aim is to produce a well-supported, cohesiveeconomic model—which he does. Caves argues that one should consider     

Harold James. Family Capitalism: Wendels, Haniels, Falcks, and the Continental European Model. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006. xii + 434 pp. ISBN 0-674-02181-9, $39.95 (paper).

In recent years, revising or amending Alfred D. Chandler’sthesis on the rise of large-scale business enterprises has becomean industry unto itself. A decade ago, the most significantchallenges to Chandler’s visible hand appeared to comefrom those who espoused both the contemporary and the historicalvirtues of flexible specialization. More recently, it appearsthat advocates of the family firm have begun to stake theirclaim to a part of Chandler’s sizable inheritance. However,just as the introduction of flexibility into the historicalliterature reflected a particular     

我国生产性服务业发展过程、问题与对策研究

文章以中国改革开放以来生产性服务业、服务业与GDP的发展数据和产业变迁为依托,分析了生产性服务业的规模发展、内部结构变革、固定投资和利用FDI的轨迹及其内在原因。并探讨了改革开放以来金融业、物流业、信息服务业和房地产业发展的现状和主要困境,认为当前我国生产性服务业规模、水平、带动作用相对滞后,而内部结构开始优化。因此本文提出制定大力发展生产性服务业和生产性服务贸易政策、加快城市化重点服务业布局、进行服务业制度创新和业务创新等三项对策,从而加快产业结构升级,构建服务型经济。     

Gabriel Tortella, Alfonso Ballestero, and Jose Luis Diaz Fernandez. Del monopolio al libre mercado: La historia de la industria petrolera espanola [From Monopoly to the Free Market: A History of the Spanish Oil Industry]. Madrid, Spain: LID Editorial Empresarial S.L., 2003. 632 pp. ISBN 8-488-71732-6, X23.08.

What interest can there be in the history of the petroleum industryof a country without oil, such as Spain? Can the lack of hydrocarbonsbe considered the main cause of its economic retardation? Thediscussion and the confutation of these two questions, whichopen the introduction, represent the subtle thread that runsthroughout this book. The volume reconstructs in very detailed and precise ways thehistory of the oil sector in Spain in     

Paul Sabin. Crude Politics: The California Oil Market, 1900-1940. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. xx + 307 pp. ISBN 0-520-24198-3, $39.95 (cloth).

Champions of the oil industry have long claimed that oil isthe cheapest form of energy. Why is it so cheap? The conventionalanswer emphasizes oil’s natural abundance and the wondersof market supply and demand. Most historians who study the industryat least implicitly accept this explanation. But is not resourceabundance a socially constructed concept? Can we so easily isolatemarket forces from politics and government policy in explainingthe cost and price of oil? These     

Ferranti. A history: Volume 3: management,mergers and fraud, 1987–1993

This paper aims to assist in a better understanding of the real role of patents by examining how Crossley Brothers – the world's main producer of gas engines before the First World War – and its partners (as well as the German inventor Nikolaus Otto) used the patent system to introduce the gas engine into Spain. The evidence suggests that patents were for them mainly an instrument to protect the market for their imported products. It is probable that the know-how transferred to the local agents and the engines imported could somehow enhance the domestic industrial abilities, but the supposed aim of the patent system – creating a local industry – was not achieved. Although the Spanish patent system was not well implemented, this was not the main explanation of this failure; rather it was the weak domestic technological abilities.     

Jean-Claude Daumas. Les territoires de la laine: Histoire de l'industrie lainiere en France au XIXe siecle. Villeneuve D'Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2004. 419 pp. ISBN 2-85939-812-0, {euro}26.00.

Based on his doctoral dissertation, Jean-Claude Daumas’sbook on the economics of nineteenth-century wool manufactureis a sound, workmanlike, and well-organized exposition. Withmany books already detailing various sectors of the industry,from the sheep’s back to the consumer’s closet,the question arises why another synthetic study was needed.Daumas’s rationale is that while the general contoursof the industry are well known, the variegated nature of individualwool centers has been glossed over. Like the industrial     

The Neglected Legacy of Lancashire Cotton: Industrial Clusters and the U.K. Outdoor Trade, 1960-1990

This article considers the neglected legacies of the Lancashirecotton industry and their impact on the U.K. outdoor trade.Studies of the decline of the Lancashire cotton industry afterthe Second World War have concentrated on the collapse of coarsecotton spinning and weaving, largely ignoring the impact ofthe knowledge and skills related to the finishing trades. Theexamination of the evolution of rainwear, coatings, and high-performancefabrics in the nineteenth century provides a backdrop to a studyof the innovation process that emerged in the U.K. outdoor tradeafter 1960. It shows that there was a path dependency betweenthe skills that resided in Lancashire’s finishing tradesand coating and fabric innovation for outdoor products. Thisarticle explores both the legacy and the ways in which the networksof innovation functioned as the U.K. outdoor trade expanded.     

David L. Mason. From Buildings and Loans to Bail-Outs: A History of the American Savings and Loan Industry, 1831-1995. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2004. xii + 349 pp. ISBN 0-521-82754-X, $50.00.

This book provides a long-term history of the savings and loanindustry in the United States, outlining and developing fourthemes. First is the history of the enterprises themselves,from their earliest years to the crisis-ridden deregulationperiod of recent history. Author David Mason also charts thegenesis and impact of collective activity—the trade associationsthat attempted to represent or regulate the industry. Third,he chronicles the relationship between the sector and government;and finally, the author aims to assess the     

Competition, Collusion, and Confusion: The State and the Reorganization of the British Cotton Industry, 1931-1939

British industrial policy in the 1930s has generated considerablehistorical controversy. This article furthers the debate byusing the cotton industry as a case study. The biggest constrainton active government policies toward cotton was not institutionalinertia or "industrial diplomacy," as some historians claim,but the sheer practical difficulty of intervening in such acomplex industry. Cotton also poses problems for historianswho see British industrial policy in the 1930s as largely aboutrestraining competition. The government feared that restrictionwould make matters worse in the cotton industry and was thereforehesitant about backing schemes designed to limit competition.Its dilemma was how best to maintain private-sector confidence.     

Arjan van Rooij. Building Plants: Markets for Technology and Internal Capabilities in DSM's Fertiliser Business, 1925-1970. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Aksant Academic Publishers, 2004. 279 pp. ISBN 90-5260-138-0, $34.95 (paper).

In spite of the central role that specialized engineering firms(firms that focus on the design and construction of industrialplants) have been playing since the end of World War II as makersand traders of the latest technology in many sectors throughoutthe world, historians have largely neglected them. For justfor this reason, we should welcome this book by Arjan van Rooij,whose main concern is precisely the historical contributionof such firms