ABSTRACT
Because of its implications for the growth performance of the British economy before 1914, the reluctance of many of Britain’s largest firms to move into some of the more important expanding areas of engineering after 1890 is a subject which has long interested economic historians.1 At a general level there has been much dis cussion of this phenomenon, but there has been little evidence derived from business records. The purpose of this paper is to examine some of the investment decisions made between 1900 and 1914 by Sir W. G. Armstrong, Whitworth & Co. Ltd. in order to shed some light on this question. An old-established Tyneside engineering firm, Arm strong Whitworth was one of Britain’s largest industrial under takings, and by the turn of the century it was increasingly specia lizing in the armaments business.2 As Mr R. C. Trebilcock has convincingly shown,3 the nature of the company’s arms operations favours a move into one of the ‘new’ industries of this period, the motor vehicle business, a move which was in fact made by Arm strong’s shortly after 1900.
