The growth of joint-stock business in Victorian Britain re-evaluated,
showing in particular the resistance to it.
Winner of the Economic History Society's Best First Monograph award 2009
The emergence of the joint-stock company in nineteenth-century Britain
was a culture shock for many Victorians. Though the home of the
industrialrevolution, the nation's economy was dominated by the private
partnership, seen as the most efficient as well as the most ethical form
of business organisation. The large, impersonal company and the rampant
speculation it was thought to encourage were viewed with suspicion and
downright hostility.
This book argues that the existing historiography understates society's
resistance to joint-stock enterprise; it employs an eclectic range of
sources, fromnewspapers and parliamentary papers to cartoons, novels and
plays, to unearth this forgotten economic debate. It explores how the
legal system was gradually restructured to facilitate joint-stock
enterprise, a process culminatingin the limited liability legislation of
the mid-1850s. This has typically been interpreted as evidence for the
emergence of new, positive attitudes to speculation and economic growth,
but the book demonstrates how traditional outlooks continued to
influence legislation, and the way in which economic reforms were driven
by political agendas. It shows how debates on the economic culture of
nineteenth-century Britain are strikingly relevant to current questions
over the ethics of multinational corporations.
James Taylor is Senior Lecturer in British History at Lancaster
University.
