A 1989 collection of essays based on original historical research in national and private bank and business archives.

Preface; 1. Introduction: multinational enterprise Barry Supple; 2. History, the social sciences and economic 'theory', with special reference to multinational enterprise Edith Penrose; 3. The changing form of multinational enterprise expansion in the twentieth century John Cantwell; 4. Electrical research, standardisation and the beginnings of the corporate economy Mikulás Teich; 5. The nature of multinationals, 1870-1939 T. A. B. Corley; 6. International price maintenance: control of commodity trade in the 1920s Joseph Brandes; 7. Financial operations of US transnational corporations: development after the Second World War and recent tendencies Monika Sestáková; 8. Multinational enterprise - financing, trade, diplomacy: the Swedish case Klaus Wohlert; 9. Foreign penetration of German enterprises after the First World War: the problem of Überfremdung Gerald D. Feldman; 10. International industrial cartels, the state and politics: Great Britain between the wars Clemens A. Wurm; 11. Vickers and Schneider: a comparison of new British and French multinational strategies 1916-26 R. P. T. Davenport-Hines; 12. J. & P. Coats Ltd in Poland Emma Harris; 13. Multinationals and the French electrical industry, 1889-1940 Pierre Lanthier; 14. The Japanese cotton spinners' direct investments into China before the Second World War Tetsuya Kuwahara; 15. Mitsui Bussan during the 1920s Hiroaki Yamazaki; 16. Japanese business in the United States before the Second World War: the case of Mitsui and Mitsubishi Nobuo Kawabe; 17. The state and private enterprise in the United States-Latin American oil policy Stephen J. Randall; 18. Transnational corporations and the denationalization of the Latin American cigarette industry Phil Sheperd; 19. Summary: reflections on the papers and the debate on multinational enterprise: international finance, markets and governments in the twentieth century Charles Kindleberger; Indexes.