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The History of Foreign Investment in the United States to 1914

Mira Wilkins

Published: 1989

Total Pages: 1092

From the colonial era to 1914, America was a debtor nation in international accounts--owing more to foreigners than foreigners owed to us. By 1914 it was the world's largest debtor nation. Mira Wilkins provides the first complete history of foreign investment in the United States during that period. The book shows why the United States was attractive to foreign investors and traces the changing role of foreign capital in the nation's development, covering both portfolio and direct investment. The immense new wave of foreign investment in the United States today, and our return to the status of a debtor nation--once again the world's largest debtor nation--makes this strong exposition far more than just historically interesting. Wilkins reviews foreign portfolio investments in government securities (federal, state, and local) and in corporate stocks and bonds, as well as foreign direct investments in land and real estate, manufacturing plants, and even such service-sector activities as accounting, insurance, banking, and mortgage lending. She finds that between 1776 and 1875, public-sector securities (principally federal and state securities) drew in the most long-term foreign investment, whereas from 1875 to 1914 the private sector was the main attraction. The construction of the American railroad system called on vast portfolio investments from abroad; there was also sizable direct investment in mining, cattle ranching, the oil industry, the chemical industry, flour production, and breweries, as well as the production of rayon, thread, and even submarines. In addition, there were foreign stakes in making automobile and electrical and nonelectrical machinery. America became the leading industrial country of the world at the very time when it was a debtor nation in world accounts.

International Capital Markets and American Economic Growth, 1820-1914

Lance E. Davis

Published: 2002-07-18

Total Pages: 186

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This book is a study of the capital transfers to the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and, for the latter decades of that period, of the transfers from the United States to the rest of the worldMparticularly Canada, the Caribbean, Mexico, and Central and South America. It provides a quantitative estimate of the level and industrial composition of those transfers, and qualitative descriptions of the sources and uses of those funds; and it attempts to assess the role of those foreign transfers on the economic development of the recipient economies. In the process, it describes the evolution of the American domestic capital market. Finally, it explores the issue of domestic political response to foreign investment, attempting to explain why, given the obvious benefits of such investment, the political reaction was so negative and so intense in Latin America and in the American West, but so positive in Canada and the eastern United States.

The Growth of Multinationals

Mira Wilkins

Published: 1991

Total Pages: 632

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This important new anthology - prepared by a leading business historian - presents the outstanding contributions on the history of US, British, Continental European and Japanese multinational corporations and constitutes an introduction to the subject. The first part has four survey articles showing the origins of the multinational enterprise in the late 19th century and the subsequent developments. It then presents pioneer studies and offers a range of new perspectives on the history of multinationals. The final parts of the book contain case studies as well as articles on the history of the operations of multinational enterprises in such host countries as Britain, China, Japan and Poland. This authoritative volume provides an indispensable guide to the state-of-the-art research on the history of multinationals.