Economic Reasons for Imperialism
Surplus
- not "dumping" but normal expansion
- search for markets and raw materials
- exports rise, favorable trade balance
- tariffs rise to protect domestic industry
High Tech Industry
- 1851 Crystal Palace expo in London
- Baldwin, McCormick, Colt, Goodyear
- Singer - 1st multinational company
Isaac Singer (1811-1875)
- 1856 - patent pool, Family Model A $125
- began new industry - shoes, collars, veneers
- survived 1857 Panic due to foreign sales
- 1863 - Imslee Hopper - emph. quality
- 1864 - 175 agents in Europe
- 1867 - built Glasgow factory
- 1873 - Elizabethport factory - cost $12, sold $65
- advertising cards, embezzlement fund
- weekly reports (not by Evarts until 1880)
- "a living moving army of irresistible power,
peacefully working to conquer the world."
- 1879 Bismarck tariff, kartels to control markets
- 1895 incorp. by George Neidlinger in Germany
- 1897 incorp by Rudolf Maeder in Russia - Podolsk
"Greatest Department Store on Earth"
- Mira Wilkins - from trade to agents to factories
- Western Union, Bell Telephone, Western Electric
- Westinghouse air brakes, Remington typewriter
- Pond's, Burroughs, Eastman
- Equitable, New York Life, Mutual
- expanding high-tech cos. create foreign demand
Spillover in Canada, Mexico
- Canada 1879 policy to grant concessions
- Porfiro Diaz 1877-1911 - rurales; $.25 labor
- 1879 Sonora RR part of Atchinson, Topeka
- 840 mining cos. by 1908 - highest investment
- Consolidated Silver forms Batopilas Co.
- Meyer Guggenheim forms ASARCO
- Guggenex explores with Rhodes in South Africa
- Alaska syndicate with Morgan for Kennecott copper
- American Chicle, W.R. Grace
- Bernard Baruch's Continental Rubber
Sources:
- Wilkins, Mira. The Emergence of Multinational Enterprise: American Business Abroad from the Colonial Era to 1914. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1970. 310 p.
- Wilkins, Mira. The Maturing of Multinational Enterprise: American Business Abroad from 1914 to 1970. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1974. 590 p.
- Wilkins, Mira. The History of Foreign Investment in the United States to 1914. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1989. 1055 p.
- Wilkins, Mira, ed. The Growth of Multinationals. Aldershot, Hants, England ; Brookfield, Vt., USA : E. Elgar, 1991. 608 p.
- Caltvedt, Lester. "Herzog's Fitzcarraldo and the Rubber Era," Film and History XVIII No. 4 (December 1988) 74-84.
- Davis, John H. The Guggenheims: an American Epic. New York: Morrow, 1978. 608 p.