Enterprise and Technology
The German and British Steel Industries, 1897–1914

This is a detailed account of the British and German steel industries' performances during three decades that were marked by radical changes in technology.

Ulrich Wengenroth (Author)

9780521103336, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 19 March 2009

308 pages, 16 b/w illus. 33 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm, 0.46 kg

"Ulrich Wengenroth has produced a fine history of the two main steelmaking industries of Europe in the late nineteenth century....Wengenroth's clear and deeply researched book will be important reading for anyone working on the economic history of Britain and Germany in the late nineteenth century." Steven Webb, Central European History

This is a detailed account of the British and German steel industries' performances during three decades that 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 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'.

Introduction
1. The technology of late nineteenth-century steelmaking
2. Expanding into the Slump: the railways as major customers of the new steel industry
3. Surmounting the Slump: the individual strategies of firms
4. Surmounting the Slump: collective strategies
5. New processes and new markets
6. Efficiency and capacity for innovation
Sources and bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Economic history [KCZ]