ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION The United Kingdom is, in at least one way, a unique country for examination in the context of the investment development path (IDP). As the first country to industrialise, the UK was in the position of being the first outward investor of the industrial period. In this respect the UK might be thought of as having enjoyed international first-mover advantages in terms of its comparative foreign direct investment position. It was in the UK that the sudden acceleration of technical and economic development began in the second half of the eighteenth century, transforming the British economy from a traditional agrarian to an industrial structure, based on capital equipment and manufacturing. From around 1830 to the early twentieth century the Industrial Revolution spread throughout Europe and the United States. The diffusion of this process has continued worldwide, throughout the twentieth century, and particularly since the end of the Second World War. It is precisely this perpetuation that has generated continuing large-scale adjustments in international trade and investment patterns, not least on the part of the UK.
