page_title: Economic history of the United Kingdom
section_title: Historiography of Business in the United Kingdom
hierarchical_section_title: Economic history of the United Kingdom / Historiography of Business in the United Kingdom
caption_attribution_description: Русский: Джордж Анвин (George Unwin) — профессор экономической истории
context_page_description: The economic history of the United Kingdom relates the economic development in the British state from the absorption of Wales into the Kingdom of England after 1535 to the modern United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland of the early 21st century.
  Scotland, England, and Wales shared a monarch from 1601 but their economies were run separately until they were unified in the 1707 Act of Union. Ireland was incorporated in the United Kingdom economy between 1800 and 1920; from 1921 the Irish Free State became independent and set its own economic policy.
  Great Britain, and England in particular, became one of the most prosperous economic regions in Europe between 1600 and 1700, Industrialisation in the UK from the mid-eighteenth century resulted in economic developments described by many historians as the British industrial revolution. These developments resulted in Britain becoming one of the premier economies in Europe during the first half of the 19th century, the most prominent industrial power in the world economy, and a major political power. Its industrialists were major innovators in machinery such as steam engines, textile equipment, and tool-making.
context_section_description: Business History in Britain emerged in the 1950s following the publication of a series of influential company histories and the establishment of the journal Business History in 1958 at the University of Liverpool. The most influential of these early company histories was Charles Wilson (historian)’s History of Unilever, the first volume of which was published in 1954. Other examples include D.C.Coleman's work on Courtaulds and artificial fibres, B.W.E. Alford on Wills and the tobacco industry, and T.C. (Theo) Barker on Pilkington's and glass manufacture.  These early studies were conducted primarily by economic historians interested in the role of leading firms in the development of the wider industry, and therefore went beyond mere corporate histories. Although some work examined the successful industries of the industrial revolution and the role of the key entrepreneurs, in the 1960s scholarly debate in British business history became increasingly focused on economic decline. For economic historians, the loss of British competitive advantage after 1870 could at least in part be explained by entrepreneurial failure, prompting further business history research into individual industry and corporate cases. However, by 1970 this interpretation of 'Entrepreneurial failure' had been challenged by Cliometricians, notably by Deidre (ne Donald) N. McCloskey, who quantitatively assessed the productivity path of the British economy in a more favourable light. More traditional analysis presented by Peter Payne in 'British Entrepreneurship in the Nineteenth Century' presented a similar, though more deliberately nuanced, refutation of the thesis of "Entrepreneurial Failure"
  One debate concerns the performance of firms in the Lancashire cotton textile industry. Often seen as the "leading sector" that propelled "economic take-off" of industrialisation, by 1890 its firms appeared relatively slow to invest in and adopt recent technological developments and demonstrated low levels of relative labour productivity by 1900. William Lazonick for example argued that cotton textile entrepreneurs in Lancashire. like their American cotton-textile producing counterparts, failed to develop the larger integrated plants found in other sectors of the American economy; a general conclusion proposed by Chandler in a number of comparative case studies.Paradoxically, J. & P. Coats, a Scottish cotton manufacturing firm head-quartered in Paisley, Renfrewshire, not only achieved the industry's highest levels of productivity, in the world, let alone the United Kingdom, but the company also owned, amongst its impressive portfolio of subsidiaries, what was probably the best performing cotton manufacturing firm in the United States of American. While Lancashire may have failed, J. & P. Coats, the world's largest manufacturing company by equity market value in 1900, did not.
  With the economic performance of British businessmen before 1914 now viewed in a better informed and more balanced way, the critics turned to sociology to emphasise their position in the class structure, especially their supposed subordinate relationship to the aristocracy, and their desire to use their wealth to purchase landed estates, and acquire hereditary titles.  
  British business history began to widen its scope in the 1980s, with innovative research conducted at the London School of Economics's Business History Unit, led first by Leslie Hannah, then by Terry Gourvish; here David Jeremy edited the multi-volume . A similar collection of biographies was published by scholars associated with the Centre for Business History in Scotland, the Dictionary of Scottish Business Biography . Other research centres followed, including Reading, reflecting an increasing involvement in the discipline by Business and Management School academics. 
  The journal Business History, reflected the widening ambition of the discipline as editors, first, Geoffrey Jones (academic)(Harvard Business School), Charles Harvey (University of Newcastle Business School), and more latterly, John Wilson (University of Newc
caption: George Unwin
exif: {"Image Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Image ImageDescription": "", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS Windows", "Image DateTime": "2008-08-18T16:23:38Z", "Image JPEGInterchangeFormat": "342", "Image JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5075", "Image Copyright": "", "Image ExifOffset": "224", "EXIF Flash": "14449", "EXIF ColorSpace": "1400", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "277", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "360"}