ABSTRACT
Part of the underlying motivation for writing and reading business histories of individual firms has been the promise to gain understanding of general factors in the growth of the industry or the whole economy. In assessing the significance of business history, Barry Supple argued that company histories should provide insights about the wider economic world.1 More specifically, Leslie Hannah has suggested that ‘business history has an important part to play in the explanation of economic growth’ and Roy Church has endorsed Peter Payne’s view that business history is the ‘grass roots approach to economic history’.2 Asa Briggs included amongst his reasons for writing business history the illumination of many general points both in economic and social history .3
