ABSTRACT
The steel industry has been regarded as strategically important for its contribution to the state’s war-making capacity and for its contribution to national economic growth. The modern steel industry was important in the search for improved materials for artillery and the mass production of small arms in the mid-nineteenth century (Pearton, 1982: 81-2; McNeill, 1982: 236-7). Before World War I innovation and growth were stimulated by the needs of armies and navies and by railroadification, itself a major contributor to growth of other sectors. After World War I this commitment of states to steel spread to other countries and was reinforced by a belief in its centrality to rapid industrialization more generally.
