ABSTRACT

The conclusion reviews how the new findings influence three themes of theoretical and empirical understanding of entrepreneurship. First, the re-positioning of entrepreneurship studies to focus on whole-population analysis gives key advantages: simple definition, inclusiveness of all categories of business by size and legal basis, applicability to corporates and non-corporates, consistent data availability from both historical and modern records, matching economic definitions of entrepreneurs as recipients of entrepreneurial income, and fitting measured data with historical national income accounts. Second, it allows a re-appraisal of the literature that has suggested that the Victorian era witnessed a decline in entrepreneurship. On the contrary, we demonstrate that entrepreneurship increased, and that female entrepreneurship was frequent. We argue that this was the result of the key drivers of entrepreneurship: rapid population growth, open trade, urbanisation and a breakdown in traditional systems limiting market entry into many sectors. This drove the ‘age of entrepreneurship’, but countervailing tendencies led to a slowdown after 1901–11: increasing dominance of larger firms, development of national and regional brands and branch networks and the increasing ability of corporations to reap benefits compared to non-corporate proprietors. Third, whole-population analysis opens a range of exciting new avenues for future research which are briefly outlined.