This essay compares the business history literatures of Britain and the Netherlands. Although these two European countries are geographically — and, some would argue, culturally — proximate and share a similar commercial and colonial past, their historians have often looked elsewhere, especially to Germany and the United States, when making international comparisons. Moreover while U.S. and other foreign scholars have made substantive contributions to the British literature — and have often compared Britain unfavorably with their own countries — the business history of the Netherlands has been largely ignored by the rest of the world. This essay will identify both the commonalities and differences in the business histories of the two countries and how they have been interpreted.

There can be little dispute that the central research agendas in the two countries have been predominantly national. Although British business history research covering the past 100 years is extensive and rich, it has a strong preoccupation with the theme of “failure.” The origins of Britain's industrial decline have been firmly placed as far back as at least the late nineteenth century, when the nation was slow to develop the new industries of electrical engineering and dyestuffs. For each successive generation, failure and missed opportunities have been relentlessly examined. Only since the 1980s have business historians begun to show that this theme has been overdone and have moved on to new preoccupations.