Explaining Victorian Entrepreneurship: A Cultural Problem? A Market Problem? No Problem?

The quality of British entrepreneurship in the half century before 1914 excitescontroversy. Contemporaries were of mixed minds about the matter. Alfred Marshall(1920: 92-106), for example, was uneasy about the competitive inroads entrepreneursfrom other advanced industrial countries had made into British markets, yet did notpinpoint an obvious cause of the problem, nor propose an immediate response. Withincreasing frequency, more popular, but less cautious and less reflective, expressions ofconcern erupted in books and national newspapers, with titles such as Made in Germany(1896), American Invaders (1902), and, in The Times (1902), “Crisis in British Industry”.In contrast, many contemporaries took solace from Britain’s undeniable wealth – in percapita terms the richest country in Europe by a comfortable margin throughout the period– and from the formidable export capacity of large and important industries ranging formshipbuilding to cotton spinning to financial services. Subsequent observers have echoedthese opposing views. In the 1960s, Derek Aldcroft (1964, 1968) recast the debate withinthe context of Britain’s long run economic growth performance, emphasizing perceivedfailures deemed to have become more damaging with the passage of time. David Landes(1969) concurred, noting that a culture where managers “worked at play and played atwork” was unlikely to foster good economic performance. Variants of Landes’ argumentswere supported by Donald Coleman (1973) and, in an influential book-length treatment,by Martin Wiener (1981).[...]