The hero of Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days faced momentous obstacles; the authors of American Business Abroad recognized from the beginning of their project that they too must encircle the earth and that the task would occupy not a mere eighty but at least eight hundred days. It was a daunting assignment not only in geographical range and the varieties of national conditions to be encountered, but it must also take account of numerous dramatic and even violent changes in government, industry, and business that have marked the last sixty years.

We could not have undertaken the assignment “cold.” The chief factor that made its accomplishment a possibility was that both of us had already spent some years studying automotive history, a part of that time on overseas activities. Consequently we started with a rather full background of general and even of particular information and could proceed from that point of vantage.

Important in the initiation of the project was the role of Henry E. Edmunds, Director of Research and Information for the Ford Motor Company and the head of the Ford Archives. Mr. Edmunds encouraged us to lay the project before the Ford Fund, which subsidizes activity it considers in the public interest. The Fund made a generous grant to Columbia University, and we have worked as salaried employees of the university. After two years, the Ford Fund made a supplementary contribution to the university.