Enterprise and Technology

This is a detailed account of the British and German steel industries’ performance during three decades which were marked by radical changes in technology, in sources of raw materials, and in product markets. Relying on governmental and corporate archives as well as on the contemporary trade literature, Professor Wengenroth has drawn a meticulous picture of how managements in the two countries met the strategic problems raised by these changes. The author does not however merely trace technological developments; rather, he uses them as a backdrop for a contribution to the long-running debate on Britain’s relative industrial decline in the late nineteenth century. Was this the result of massive entrepreneurial failure, or was it merely the by-product of evolutionary changes that bestowed automatic competitive advantage on latecomers such as the Germans? The author argues a detailed case for the latter scenario, and in doing so makes a major contribution to the debate on the ‘Great Depression’.