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4610 results in Twentieth century British history

Page 113 of 231

  • Appendix II - Record Keeping

  • Kevin Quinlan
  • Book:
    The Secret War Between the Wars
    Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    24 February 2023
    Print publication:
    16 October 2014, pp 191-192

  • Summary

    History has shown that intelligence can be ineffective or misunderstood without proper collation and organisation. Hence, administration and record keeping form the nucleus of an intelligence organisation. Recent studies of intelligence debacles, such as the failure to prevent the 9/11 terrorist attacks, have revealed the terrible consequences that can result from a nucleus divided.

    MI5’s own nucleus was its Registry (which ran the file and indexing system). Devised in the immediate pre-First World War period, it did not fundamentally change in peacetime. Even after the Registry overloaded MI5 in June 1940, virtually collapsing, Sir David Petrie, who was about to become the DG of MI5, concluded that B Division merely needed ‘manipulation rather than surgery’. It remained fundamentally intact.

    The basic organisational structure consisted of file groups. The ‘Personal File’ (PF) formed the central pillar of the system. One PF per suspect included all reports on that individual, including press clippings in which the suspect’s name appeared. Those reports that did not fit neatly into a PF were mostly filed in the place-card index. Known as Official Files (OF), these documents related to certain government departments or offices. Any remaining files not classified as PF or OF were indexed as Subject Files (SF). Although these miscellaneous subject files constituted the dregs of intelligence before the war, their usefulness grew over time. The importance of the OFs, by contrast, waned. All of the names and subjects contained in the files were further cross-referenced in a general card index so that ‘particulars regarding the association of any of the names with other given names, places, or subjects could be quickly traced when required with any enquiry’. Covers added to files shortly after the beginning of the First World War, creating space for noting a file’s contents, its usage, and notes made by different branches.

    Not only were targets, whether individuals or organisations, therefore made part of a web, so was the investigation process within MI5, important because ‘experience showed that not only in the filiation of cases, but also as a means of obtaining proof against agents, their “contacts” were of immense value’.

  • 11 - Armaments and the economy

    • By Jari Eloranta, Appalachian State University and University of Jyvaskyla
  • Edited by Roderick Floud, Jane Humphries, University of Oxford, Paul Johnson, University of Western Australia, Perth
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    09 October 2014, pp 279-301

  • Summary

    INTRODUCTION

    The two centuries since the French Revolution have been characterised by pivotal changes in the power relations between nations, the financing of wars, and the actual practices of warfare. European nations had already amassed great empires prior to that, but the real culmination of their political and economic aspirations occurred in the nineteenth century, in particular for Great Britain. The nineteenth century also featured the rapid advance of industrialisation, mostly in the West, which helped West European powers to acquire great military forces of unparalleled proportions. The naval supremacy of the West was proven beyond doubt during the opening of the Chinese and Japanese markets from the 1840s to the 1860s, and Great Britain played a leading role in these efforts, especially the Opium Wars. The age of total war that began in the modern sense with the French Revolution and Napoleon pushed European states to adopt more and more efficient fiscal systems in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, essentially copying British practices, and enabled some of them to dedicate more than half of their GDP to the war effort during the World Wars. Whereas in the pre-nineteenth-century world military spending was typically the dominant item within state budgets, even thrusting the most eager rulers and nations towards default, the industrialised nations developed more efficient budgeting systems to cope with the threat and execution of wars.

    The most successful fiscal model for European states to follow was the so-called British Model, which entailed developing an elaborate fiscal and financial system to support economic, political and military expansion, including the use of public debt to finance military endeavours. Subsequently, and with the emergence of modest welfare state priorities by the early twentieth century, the representative share of military spending both in terms of budgets and the economy as a whole started to decline very slowly (with the exception of the periods of the World Wars and the early Cold War); this was also the case for Great Britain.

  • 6 - Income and living standards, 1870–2010

  • Edited by Roderick Floud, Jane Humphries, University of Oxford, Paul Johnson, University of Western Australia, Perth
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    09 October 2014, pp 151-180

  • Summary

    INTRODUCTION

    This chapter is concerned with material conditions, and, in particular, changes in the size distribution of income and changes in inequality and poverty over time. Money has no intrinsic value, but it does provide the means to access goods, services and activities that do have value. In consequence, the chapter uses income as a proxy for these, though well-being is not adequately captured in this way. Most people would agree that their standard of living is determined by more than the amount of income they have, or by how much money they receive relative to others. As Sen (1987: 1) points out, ‘You could be well off, without being well. You could be well, without being able to lead the life you wanted. You could have got the life you wanted, without being happy.’ Indeed, as we shall see at the end of this chapter, for the period for which data is available, there is discord between judgements based on the analysis of the available indicators of subjective well-being and evidence relating to the material progress of living standards.

    The enumeration of poverty is often simply the outcome of a further small step in the analysis of changes in income inequality, as there is a view that the right way to define a poverty line is relative to a chosen percentile in the distribution of equivalised household income (a measure of income that takes account of differences in a household's size and composition). Piachaud (1988) and Glennerster et al. (2004) strongly advocate the use of such relative poverty measures. Current British official and quasi-official measures of poverty or deprivation also reflect this position and employ a measure based on the number or proportion of individuals who have less than 60% of equivalised median income.

    From an historical perspective, however, it is clear that what it means to be ‘poor’, and what it means to be in ‘poverty’, have evolved as categorical terms as the nation has become more affluent. The World Bank tends to use ‘absolute’ or ‘bare subsistence’ poverty measures, such as their ‘a dollar a day’ standard, for international comparisons.

  • 3 - From Empire to Europe: Britain in the world economy

  • Edited by Roderick Floud, Jane Humphries, University of Oxford, Paul Johnson, University of Western Australia, Perth
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    09 October 2014, pp 60-94

  • Summary

    INTRODUCTION: LONG-RUN TRENDS

    This chapter provides a brief introduction to the history of Britain's engagement with the international economy between 1870 and 2010. It begins by discussing long-run trends in the integration of the British economy with the rest of the world. Economic historians are typically interested in four types of flows between economies: trade in goods and services; flows of capital; migration flows; and flows of ideas and technology. The last flow is probably the most important one for countries hoping to catch up to the international technological frontier. While this was not the right way to characterise the British economy in 1870, it probably was at various points after the Second World War. Unfortunately, such flows are also the most difficult to quantify, and so I follow the bulk of the literature in concentrating on trade, capital flows and migration.

    When measuring the extent to which commodity, capital or labour markets are integrated at various points in time, researchers have adopted several approaches. The most straightforward is simply to measure the extent of trade, or capital flows, or labour flows, and see how these vary over time. In order for intertemporal comparisons to be meaningful, it is common to express the flows as a percentage of GDP, or relative to the total population, as appropriate. Another approach is to focus on the costs of transacting internationally, which will be reflected in price gaps for a homogeneous commodity, or financial asset, or type of labour, between two markets. Falling international price gaps are a sign that markets are becoming better integrated over time, rising price gaps a sign of disintegration.

    It is possible that prices could converge internationally for reasons having nothing to do with trade, while trade can increase for reasons other than the integration of international markets. If, however, price gaps converge at a time of falling transport costs, trade liberalisation, and/or rising volumes of trade, then it seems safe to conclude that integration is taking place.

  • 19 - Economic thought and ideology in Britain, 1870–2010

  • Edited by Roderick Floud, Jane Humphries, University of Oxford, Paul Johnson, University of Western Australia, Perth
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    09 October 2014, pp 506-528

  • Summary

    INTRODUCTION

    As we explain in the corresponding chapter in Volume I, it is important for economic historians to be familiar with the broad contours of the economic ideas of those who lived through the periods they are studying. This chapter deals with a period when both the economics profession (a term that hardly makes sense before 1870) and its relationship to the rest of British society altered considerably (for a broader perspective, see Backhouse 2002). Perceptions of the nature and status of economic knowledge changed in academia, in government and among the public at large. Economic ideas cannot be understood apart from the institutions and structures in which those ideas are generated and employed. During the early twentieth century economics became an academic subject, and for most of the century academic economists determined what counted as legitimate economic argument and policy. This position was challenged in the closing third of the century, and differences between arguments advanced by academics, journalists, civil servants, think tanks and economists employed in business became more pronounced.

    The appointment of William Stanley Jevons at Owens College, Manchester, in 1863 marked the real beginning of the process by which economics became a university discipline in Britain. Marshall's Cambridge Economics Tripos was established some forty years later, and during the intervening period the formal study of economics was sporadic and localised. Nonetheless, from the 1870s the University Extension movement broadened the base for the teaching of economics, while establishing the idea that the subject was one that had to be studied systematically. Discussion in a public sphere made up of an evolving network of academics, policy-makers and journalists now took place in the context of more specialised debates among economists, which were accessible only to those who had a more systematic schooling in the subject.

    Jevons was the first in Britain to publish a book devoted to the new marginalist approach to economic theory; but his major initial academic impact was on a group of students and tutors in Oxford, who during the 1880s formed the centre of British economics.

  • 17 - Sterling and monetary policy, 1870–2010

  • Edited by Roderick Floud, Jane Humphries, University of Oxford, Paul Johnson, University of Western Australia, Perth
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    09 October 2014, pp 448-475

  • Summary

    INTRODUCTION

    The role of sterling was transformed, during the period from 1870 to 2010, from being the world's most widely used currency to becoming primarily a domestic currency. In many ways this process mirrored the changing role of Britain in the international economy, as described in Chapter 3, but it also happened in the context of dramatic changes in the organisation of the international economy and the development of economic ideas. This transformation of sterling's global role had important implications for the operation of monetary policy, since the international and domestic roles of sterling were closely related. The tension between internal and external policy priorities was an enduring theme throughout this period.

    Monetary policy involves the manipulation of the money supply to achieve particular targets in the national economy; it is most commonly associated with the tool of interest rates, which affect the supply of and demand for money. Monetary policy thus has domestic implications since it determines the cost of borrowing and the relative returns to savings and may affect domestic economic performance. Lowering interest rates may, ceteris paribus, increase borrowing and investment and promote real economic growth. Conversely, raising the cost of borrowing and increasing the returns to saving may slow down investment, consumption and growth.

    Unfortunately, the links between interest rates, money supply and economic performance are unpredictable and depend on a range of contextual factors, including the market's judgement of the credibility of the monetary targeting (Mishkin 2007). There are also variable time lags before the effects can be measured, so monetary policy is a difficult instrument to deploy with precision. In an open economy, such as that of Britain for most of the nineteenth century and the latter half of the twentieth, interest rate adjustments also have implications for the balance of payments, since higher interest rates will attract foreign capital seeking higher returns and lower interest rates may lead to a capital outflow as domestic investors seek higher returns abroad.

The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain
  • Volume 2, Growth and Decline, 1870 to the Present, 2nd edition
  • Edited by Roderick Floud, Jane Humphries, Paul Johnson
  • Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    09 October 2014
  • A new edition of the leading textbook on the economic history of Britain since industrialization. Combining the expertise of more than thirty leading historians and economists, Volume 2 tracks the development of the British economy from late nineteenth-century global dominance to its early twenty-first century position as a mid-sized player in an integrated European economy. Each chapter provides a clear guide to the major controversies in the field and students are shown how to connect historical evidence with economic theory and how to apply quantitative methods. The chapters re-examine issues of Britain's relative economic growth and decline over the 'long' twentieth century, setting the British experience within an international context, and benchmark its performance against that of its European and global competitors. Suggestions for further reading are also provided in each chapter, to help students engage thoroughly with the topics being discussed.

  • 10 - The City and the corporate economy since 1870

  • Edited by Roderick Floud, Jane Humphries, University of Oxford, Paul Johnson, University of Western Australia, Perth
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    09 October 2014, pp 255-278

  • Summary

    INTRODUCTION

    The Victorians associated the City with a particular part of London and all the diverse activities that took place there; a hundred years later the Financial Times regarded the City as ‘no longer a postal address’ but as shorthand for the ‘finance function’ (Michie 1992: 12). Today the City comprises the largest international banking centre in the world, the largest foreign exchange market, the fourth largest stock market, the largest centre for Eurobond trading, the London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange, the largest asset management business in Europe, Lloyd's of London and finally a shadow banking sector comprising hedge funds, private equity groups, money market funds, commodity funds and securitised investment vehicles.

    For over a hundred years from 1870 the British financial system, with the City at its centre, adopted a ‘separation of activities’ model whereby each financial institution specialised in a particular activity and in general complemented rather than competed with each other. On the London Stock Exchange (LSE), stockbrokers took orders to buy and sell securities from investors and passed them to stock jobbers who made a price in the securities and filled the orders; neither brokers nor jobbers were owned by a bank or other corporation. Commercial banks took in deposits and lent short-term to industry. Merchant banks advised sovereign issuers and large industrial clients and were surrounded by a multitude of discount brokers, specialist finance houses and smaller private banks. In this chapter, we are concerned with the interaction between the City and the corporate economy and therefore concentrate on those institutions most engaged in servicing the needs of the corporate sector.

    Before plunging headlong into a discussion of the historical development of the UK financial system, it is worth briefly considering the main features of the German universal banking model; this offers an important and instructive contrast to the separation of activities model.

  • 8 - Consumption and affluence, c. 1870–2010

  • Edited by Roderick Floud, Jane Humphries, University of Oxford, Paul Johnson, University of Western Australia, Perth
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    09 October 2014, pp 205-228

  • Summary

    INTRODUCTION

    Affluence can be defined as a shift between different states, both personal and collective, a rising flow of cheaper goods and experiences, of novelty and obsolescence, as new satisfactions are discovered, and old ones are discarded. Experiences disseminate as a sequence of S-shaped curves, just a few of them at the outset, and then more frequent, affecting only small numbers slowly, rising faster to an inflection point, then slowing down and flattening out when novelty is exhausted and everyone is included (Scitovsky 1992). Likewise, in orthodox microeconomic consumption theory, wants become less compelling the more they are satisfied, so people shift their preferences sequentially to more pressing ones. But Want in general is insatiable, and the craving continues.

    So far, modern affluence in the UK has largely followed these patterns. In the course of the twentieth century, the luxuries of the rich have become necessities for all. The movement has been from getting to spending, from work to leisure, from toil to comfort, from privies to bathrooms, from coal fires to central heating. The experience of affluence extended primarily to the top fifth of the population between the wars, and to the rest only from the 1950s onwards. An inflection point appears to have been reached in the 1970s, and affluence may now be levelling off, we know not for how long.

    Income and spending are intermediate: the ultimate pay-offs are emotional, the ultimate purpose is well-being. In contrast, the microeconomic approach to wellbeing is to measure consumption expenditures (Olney 1991). In a rough and ready way, this is fine. At the bottom of the ladder of needs, in the quest for food and shelter, consumption expenditure is a good proxy for utility. But as satisfactions multiply, expenditure is no longer such a good measure of well-being. The focus on expenditure also implies that choice equals welfare. Now, the excitement and anticipation of choice can be good in themselves, but form only a small part of well-being.

  • 16 - Soft power: the media industries in Britain since 1870

  • Edited by Roderick Floud, Jane Humphries, University of Oxford, Paul Johnson, University of Western Australia, Perth
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    09 October 2014, pp 416-447

  • Summary

    INTRODUCTION

    The Olympic Games in London in the summer of 2012 stood at the end of a long twentieth century in which the British economy changed from a manufacturing stalwart into a major exporter of services. The opening and closing ceremonies stood in remarkable contrast. The former related a story in which the Industrial Revolution and the welfare state figured heavily, the latter focused exclusively on music, Britain's foremost cultural export. In public perception, then, the British comparative advantage had little to do any more with manufacturing. Instead, the ceremony closed a twentieth century in which Britain benefited from a distinctive capability in media and entertainment. In the public mind the music industry's importance was far larger than its limited GDP share suggested.

    Media can be seen as an infrastructure industry such as electricity or transport. Through information transmission, they helped markets exist and function; through the conditioning of morals and empathy they reduced transaction costs; through advertising they revolutionised the market structure of consumer goods industries; through educational materials they increased human capital; through the formation of expectations they increased citizens' aspirations; and, finally, they facilitated knowledge exchange and collective action that could kickstart institutional change, as has become evident so recently in the Arab spring. A contemporary economic historian might exclaim that media are everywhere except in the economic history literature, not unlike Briggs's (1960) remark that ‘The provision of entertainment has never been a subject of great interest either to economists or economic historians – at least in their working hours.’

    This chapter examines three questions. First, we investigate how new media industries have arisen in Britain since 1870 and how we can conceptualise their emergence. Second, we explore what tendencies influenced the long-run evolution of each of these industries. Third, we assess the impact they had on the rest of the economy.

    These questions are worthwhile because it is likely that Britain traditionally had a comparative advantage in entertainment production that it could never fully exploit internationally.

  • 15 - The growth of the public sector

  • Edited by Roderick Floud, Jane Humphries, University of Oxford, Paul Johnson, University of Western Australia, Perth
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    09 October 2014, pp 387-415

  • Summary

    INTRODUCTION

    During the twentieth century, the dividing line between the private and public sectors became hotly disputed territory. It was the source of more economic debate than any other topic apart from the state of the macroeconomy. The origins of that debate and of the rise of the public sector are to be found in the mid-nineteenth century. From modest beginnings in the 1870s, the public sector grew fairly consistently in peacetime periods with noticeable spurts immediately after each of the two World Wars. Expressions of ideological commitments often took the headlines – Margaret Thatcher and Michael Foot in the 1980s, or the 1920s debates about proposals for new government housing estates – though never approaching the revolutionary tendencies in Germany and Russia.

    Practical action in fact often revealed a common commitment to the mixed economy. It was under a Conservative Party government that the BBC and the Central Electricity Board were established in 1926 and that Rolls Royce and the Rover Car group were rescued in the early 1970s, whilst the privatisation of the water industry and the private finance initiatives for hospitals took place under the Blair/Brown Labour partnership of the 1990s–2000s. Indeed there were several important driving forces over which the politicians had little control. National defence, reconstruction after the wars, internal unification were of vital concern whilst technological change and externally imposed political changes (the microchip for outsourcing, loss of colonies for airlines) fundamentally changed the parameters of the debates and government policies.

    The size of the public sector can be measured in different ways. Production of goods and services (like health, armaments) can be measured by the value added or by incomes generated (wages, profits, rent) but public spending on goods and services is the most common; this is because of its ease of measurement, because it complements the government cash transfers on pensions, child benefit etc. and because it corresponds to the monitoring and control mechanisms used by national Treasuries (www.ons.gov.uk/ons; www.imf.org; www.epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu).

  • 18 - Economic policy and management

  • Edited by Roderick Floud, Jane Humphries, University of Oxford, Paul Johnson, University of Western Australia, Perth
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    09 October 2014, pp 476-505

  • Summary

    INTRODUCTION

    There was a transformation in the scale and scope of government involvement in the economy between the mid-Victorian era and the early twenty-first century: from small, laissez-faire government at mid-nineteenth century through to the current modern managed market economy and welfare state. This transformation was profound, but distinctly non-linear; it is also very far from straightforward to explain in terms of either origins or its effects upon the real economy. For exegetical purposes, we divide this transformation into four epochs:

  • 1 1870s to the First World War (hereafter, pre-war), during which the traditional defences of the minimalist state came under pressure but the citadel of laissezfaire was not breached.

  • 2 The period from the First World War to the reconstruction phase immediately following the Second World War (hereafter, trans-war) in which the first conflict breached the citadel on many fronts, the interwar period marked the origins of modern micro-and macroeconomic management, while the second total war brought unparalleled dirigism, followed by micromanaged reconstruction.

  • 3 A period, roughly coinciding with the ‘Golden Age’ of post-war capitalism (c. 1950–73), and often termed the Keynesian era, in which big government came of age and modern economic management was crystallised.

  • 4 The period within which we still reside, in which, initially with some ideological force (Thatcherism), but later more pragmatism and nuance, a neo-liberal economic agenda was pursued against a background of renewed globalisation; this raised profound questions about national varieties of capitalism (VoC) and thus the future of national economic policies.

    • The evolution of British economic policy and the debates surrounding its impact on the real economy form our focus. Necessarily, this is very selective. Thus the account is more macro- than microeconomic; and less a complete narrative and chronology than an exploration of trends, key themes and major policy episodes. It is also framed by two conditions. First, the axiom that economic policy is as much about politics as economics, meaning that the fullest insights into policy formulation and economic impact – both crucially dependent upon the configuration of factor markets – occur when economic historians adopt a political economy methodology.

  • 2 - Economic growth during the long twentieth century

  • Edited by Roderick Floud, Jane Humphries, University of Oxford, Paul Johnson, University of Western Australia, Perth
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    09 October 2014, pp 26-59

  • Summary

    INTRODUCTION

    This chapter reviews British economic growth performance from mid-Victorian times to the eve of the financial crisis which erupted in 2007. It aims to place this experience in the context both of Britain's early start as the first industrial nation and its subsequent relative economic decline and also within ideas from modern growth economics. A growth accounting framework is used to establish the proximate sources of growth and to make comparisons with Germany and the United States. Productivity outcomes are examined in relation to successive epochs of supply-side policy.

    The chapter analyses and evaluates Britain's long-run growth record using insights based on models which view the sources of growth as ‘endogenous’, that is to say, determined within the economic system. In other words, the incentive structures which underpin decisions to invest, to innovate and to adopt new technology will be of central importance, together with the political economy of government decisions which directly or indirectly affect the rate of improvement of productive potential.

    Against this background, special attention is given to several debates, including whether the British economy ‘failed’ in the pre-1914 period; whether the interwar period, and especially the 1930s, saw a successful regeneration of the economy's growth potential; what explains falling behind in the so-called ‘Golden Age’ of European economic growth after the Second World War; and how far the radical change in policy initiated in the Thatcher years after 1979 delivered an improvement in growth compared with other European countries.

    AN OVERVIEW OF LONG-RUN ECONOMIC GROWTH

    In 1870, Britain was the leading industrial nation and had an income level well above that of major rivals. Before 1913 the United States overtook the UK but in 1950 the UK was still well ahead of both France and West Germany. After that, slower growth in the UK meant that those countries pulled ahead and had established a significant income gap by the end of the 1970s.

  • 7 - Technology, innovation and economic growth in Britain since 1870

  • Edited by Roderick Floud, Jane Humphries, University of Oxford, Paul Johnson, University of Western Australia, Perth
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    09 October 2014, pp 181-204

  • Summary

    INTRODUCTION

    Economic growth can be driven in the short run by factor accumulation or by utilising factors more efficiently, but permanent increases can result only from technological innovation, including, within this, term improvements in products and processes in manufacturing, services and indeed agriculture. This chapter will focus on machines and innovations in mechanical processes, while Chapter 13 discusses innovation in services.

    Given Britain's loss of industrial pre-eminence from the late nineteenth century, an absence in new technology formation is as natural an explanation for British failure as cultural interpretations that emphasise a weakness of the industrial spirit (Wiener 1981). While Britain was the first ‘workshop of the world’, its lagging position behind the technology frontier during the drive to industrial maturity is a topic of some debate in economic history. Accounts of technological progress during industrialisation emphasise that Britain's rise was defined by capabilities in a broad array of industries and by a culturally enlightened and technically competent stock of human capital that could translate new ideas from home, or abroad, into commercially viable innovations (Mokyr 1990, 2002, 2010). What changed the trajectory of technological change in Britain from this high point of early economic development?

    This chapter examines the hypothesis that Britain has failed technologically. It provides a statistical portrait of innovation over the last 140 years and it then focuses on three main areas of explanation for Britain's historical innovation performance. First, it analyses incentives for technological development, specifically British patent law and efforts to induce innovators using inducement prizes as an alternative or complementary mechanism. Second, it explores the organisational structure of innovation in Britain and R&D performance. Finally, it examines public policy efforts to promote industrial science and innovation clusters.

    The data strongly support the argument that Britain's technological performance was lacklustre during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when other industrial nations began to catch up on Britain's early technological lead.

Page 113 of 231