ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines the business and production networks in North America's nineteenth-century harvesting machinery industry. It treats the American reaper as a style of harvesting machines developed in the USA., but one that quickly became a transnational product made and sold in many countries. The book breaks with the national economy as the container for analysis of the harvesting machinery industry, but, innovatively, in the context of nineteenth-century manufacturing. It addresses the dramatic breakthrough to mass production achieved in the 1880s by two enterprises located in Chicago. The book analyses the linkages, contracts, strategic alliances, licensing agreements, and cooperative arrangements between firms. It concludes with a survey of the harvest scene as the American reaper was leaving the field. The book relates the dynamics and imperatives of the licensing regime, the constraints on corporate concentration and productivity imposed by Victorian-era production practices and interest groups.
