Introduction

This chapter highlights how tariffs and imperial preference policies pre-1938 positively impacted FDI, encouraging foreign firms to invest in British-based production to avoid tariffs and to access Britain's large domestic and Empire markets. It focuses on two aims of the government: to increase the size of British firms through mergers that would allow them to compete internationally, and to improve the quality of management to make the best use of new technologies and the greater size of these firms. The concept of the Routledge Focus on Industrial History series was motivated by the desire of the editors to provide an outlet for articles originally published in the defunct Journal of Industrial History.