In this study of lending in the emergence of a modern steel industry in the United States, I analyze the evolving interaction between borrowers and lenders in historical context. I show how “relationship lending” (that is, credit allocation in which personal contacts play a major role) can go wrong, despite good intentions at the outset, and that institutional conditions exert an important influence on how lenders and borrowers negotiate conflicts. Particularly important in the case of Moses Taylor and Joliet Iron & Steel Company were the uncertain jurisdictions and political maneuvering that stemmed from structural peculiarities of the U.S. legal system, peculiarities that belie claims of its efficacy for protecting creditor interests. Although this failure of relationship lending might seem to imply negative consequences for economic development, I show that, at least in this case, the opposite interpretation is more compelling.

This article explores the globalization of knowledge-based services and their impact on host-country firms’ organizational capabilities. Two drivers of such globalization—foreign aid and foreign direct investment coming from the United States—contributed to the development of engineering consulting in Spain in the beginning of the new global economy. The largest Spanish engineering firms have been able to integrate imported knowledge into their own organizational capabilities, enabling them to compete successfully in international markets. This imported knowledge was disseminated in two ways: through private companies, via affiliates and strategic alliances between locals and foreigners; and through the technical and military aid the U.S. government provided during the Cold War.

The relationship between ownership and control of distant ventures has been a major topic in business history. This relationship prompted the creation of a specific organizational form, the freestanding company, particularly active in international business before World War I. The freestanding form and railway companies such as Companhia Real share the common characteristic of being stand-alone firms based on foreign direct investment (FDI), but their legal ownership and management strategy were different. The freestanding companies offshored legal ownership; Companhia Real offshored top management since it was incorporated in the country hosting FDI. This business configuration was usual in French investments across European peripheral countries. This article introduces a new concept into the current international business literature, emphasizing the polymorphous character of foreign investment before World War I.

This article explores the tendering process for the construction of the Tanzam oil pipeline during the mid-1960s. In addressing aspects of the political response to British investment overseas and the history of the British company Lonrho, it argues that the British government's determination to concentrate financial investments at home affected its ability to project its presence through supporting business overseas. In addition, the article suggests that the Zambian government demonstrated autonomy in awarding the tender.

This article argues that, in the mid-nineteenth century, the American merchant community created local commercial organizations to propagate a vision of economic development based on republican ideals. As part of a “business revolution,” these organizations attempted to balance competition and cooperation in order to promote and direct the expansion of national markets and commercial activity throughout the country. Faced with the crisis of divergent sectional political economies and committed to the belief that businessmen needed a stronger political voice, merchant groups banded together to form the National Board of Trade, an association devoted to creating a unified commercial interest and shaping national economic policies.

Arthur L. Honiker, from “Brooklyn, New York,” reviewed American Business Abroad: Ford on Six Continents, first published in 1964, in the Autumn 1966 issue of the Business History Review. His review was sober, yet quite positive: “This is a thoroughly researched, straightforward account of the overseas expansion of the Ford Motor Company during the sixty years from its founding in 1903.” He praised the book's contextualization of “the vast economic and political changes in the world during that period” and “its objective evaluation of the consequences to the corporation, to the United States, and to the host nations from Ford's activities abroad” (Business History Review 40, no. 3 [1966]: 395).