Chambers of Commerce Historical Census and Benchmarking Data, 1790-2005

The aim of the project was to understand the politics, economics and sociology of the membership and services of Chambers of Commerce from their establishment in the 1770s up to the present. An important part of the analysis involved charting the financial structure of chambers, subscriptions, staff, committee structures, membership size, membership sector and corporate status, etc. This forms the element of data collection that is deposited. A comparator used, in the absence of information on company numbers in each locality, was the population of the chamber's area. This is also contained in the dataset. The research sought to combine all sources that could be found to make data coverage as complete as possible, but as with all archive studies, not all variables could be completed for all time periods.<br> <br> The data deposit arises from preparation of the first systematic and definitive history of Chambers of Commerce in the UK. The full information on this study is published as <i>Local Business Voice: the History of Chambers of Commerce in Britain, Ireland and Revolutionary America, 1760-2011</i> (published by Oxford University Press, October 2011). This data collection provides the statistical material used in that book as a source for other researchers and for the Chamber system itself. The data are the only long-term aligned source of information on Chambers of Commerce ever made available so far, and is based on modern benchmarking definitions. The result should provide a context for future local studies and a guide to wider sources. It will be of particular value for future benchmarking and long term comparative research of different locations.<br> <br>