Dudley Docker
The Life and Times of a Trade Warrior

R. P. T. Davenport-Hines (Author)

9780521894005, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 22 April 2004

308 pages
23 x 15.3 x 1.7 cm, 0.476 kg

Dudley Docker (1862–1944) was one of the most powerful European businessmen of his era, through his secretiveness and taste for intrigue served to obscure his importance. This book is a feat of detection and historical reconstruction which establishes him as a figure of substantial influence. Like all good business history it transcends narrow departmental interests. It is a solid mixture of business, economic, political, social and even diplomatic history. It sketches the life and times of Docker: it describes the deals he fixed, recounts the rise and fall of the companies he directed, but also recreates the milieu in which he worked and portrays British socio-economic history from his standpoint. The book's chief theme is the decline of British industrial hegemony since 1880.

List of illustrations, figures and tables
Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
1. Dudley Docker and his world
2. Domestic life and early career
3. Birmingham's industrial titan 1902–14
4. Business leagues and business newspapers 1905–14
5. The Great War 1914–18
6. The Federation of British industries and the British Commonwealth Union 1916–22
7. Diplomacy, the British Trade Corporation and the British Stockbrockers Trust 1916–25
8. Armaments, electricity and rolling-stock 1917–29
9. Inter-war politics 1922–39
10. International electrical and railway trusts 1914–44
11. Birmingham Small Arms 1918–44
12. Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Industry & industrial studies [KN]