Foreign Multinational Retailers in Britain, 1850-1962

With inward investment such an important contributor to the United Kingdom economy in recent decades, and increasingly in services, this project was designed to assess the historical impact of foreign direct investment in the United Kingdom's largest service sector: retailing. Accordingly the project's principal aim was to map the complete population of subsidiaries of foreign firms active in British retailing from 1850 (before when foreign entry was negligible) to 1962 (after when official sources of inward direct investment begin). Using standard historical research methods, 108 separate retailing subsidiaries of foreign firms active in the United Kingdom during the period were documented. This population was then compared with the historical population of inward investors in manufacturing, and with the United Kingdom retailing sector in general. Furthermore, the dataset constructed here was spliced onto existing datasets of current indicators of foreign entry into British retailing. This then enabled the longitudinal analysis to be brought forward to the present, providing important historical context for current trends.