BL First published history of the UAC The United Africa Company, formed in 1929, was the largest single commercial organization in West and Equatorial Africa. This is a comprehensive and detailed account of its history based on unrestricted access to the archives.

The Business of Decolonization serves to deepen our understanding of the end of the British empire, too often approached as if it was a process shaped and experienced exclusively by nationalist and imperial politicians and policy-makers. It explores British companies' experience of, and involvement in, developments leading to the transfer of power in Ghana, the former colony of the Gold Coast. The book demonstrates that businessmen developed strategies to cope with political change, reveals the extent of their involvement in nationalist politics, and highlights the contrasting responses of different companies to political and constitutional developments in the colony. Drawing on an extensive range of company, business association, personal, and official papers, the book focuses primarily on company activity. However, it also investigates relations between British firms and the colonial state on the eve of Ghanaian independence, and examines the place of British business interests in British policy.

The first volume of The Cambridge History of Capitalism provides a comprehensive account of the evolution of capitalism from its earliest beginnings. Starting with its distant origins in ancient Babylon, successive chapters trace progression up to the 'Promised Land' of capitalism in America. Adopting a wide geographical coverage and comparative perspective, the international team of authors discuss the contributions of Greek, Roman, and Asian civilizations to the development of capitalism, as well as the Chinese, Indian and Arab empires. They determine what features of modern capitalism were present at each time and place, and why the various precursors of capitalism did not survive. Looking at the eventual success of medieval Europe and the examples of city-states in northern Italy and the Low Countries, the authors address how British mercantilism led to European imitations and American successes, and ultimately, how capitalism became global.

This collection of essays honours David Fieldhouse, latterly Vere Harmsworth Professor of Imperial and Naval History at Cambridge and a foremost authority on the economics of the modern British Empire. The contributors include an impressive array of former students, colleagues, and friends, and their subjects range widely across the economic and administrative fields of British imperial history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Reflecting many of Fieldhouse's own areas of scholarly interest, the essays address economics and business, theories of imperialism, strategies of administration, and decolonization.

Merchants to Multinationals examines the evolution of multinational trading companies from the eighteenth century to the present day. During the Industrial Revolution, British merchants established overseas branches which became major trade intermediaries and subsequently engaged in foreign direct investment. Complex multinational business groups emerged controlling large investments in natural resources, processing, and services in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. While theories of the firm predict the demise over time of merchant firms, this book identifies the continued resilience of British trading companies despite the changing political and business environments of the twentieth century. Like Japanese trading companies, they 're-invented' themselves in successive generations. The competences of the trading companies resided in their information-gathering, relationship-building, human resource, and corporate governance systems. This book provides a new dimension to the literature on international business through the focus on multinational service firms and its evolutionary approach based on confidential business records.

Debates about the origins and effects of European rule in the non-European world have animated the field of economic history since the 1850s. This pioneering text provides a concise and accessible resource that introduces key readings, builds connections between ideas and helps students to develop informed views of colonialism as a force in shaping the modern world. With special reference to European colonialism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in both Asia and Africa, this book: • critically reviews the literature on colonialism and economic growth; • covers a range of different methods of analysis; • offers a comparative approach, as opposed to a collection of regional histories, deftly weaving together different themes. With debates around globalization, migration, global finance and environmental change intensifying, this authoritative account of the relationship between colonialism and economic development makes an invaluable contribution to several distinct literatures in economic history.

This handbook synthesises some literature of the last 40 years in 28 chapters. The coverage is split into the following areas : the history and theory of the multinational enterprise; the political and policy environment of international business.