The title of my first book on the history of British manufacturing was quite clear when it said How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World. In the text I was equally certain that it was not Britain alone that did the shaping. My quest now is to find what influence other countries had. Certainly in the trading world which gave birth to manufacturing British adventurers were not first. In the context of the trading world India and Africa in their different ways had their own influence on British manufacturing.
My starting point is, as it was with HBSTMW, the Great Exhibition of 1851.
James Ward, the celebrated animal artist, wrote a book on the Great Exhibition entitled The World and its Workshops. He is viewing the exhibition from the point of view of a British visitor comparing the produce of his home country with that of foreigners. In relation to this he is keen to encourage the development of other nations for they will then become better customers for British goods. Follow this link to read more of what he had to say.
Continuing my attempt to address the question, I draw on a series of papers given to the Society of Arts in 1852 reflecting upon the Great Exhibition. One such had as its focus machines for working in metal and wood and you can read what it said by following this link. There follows a piece on manufacturing in India, which was the subject of another paper.
From these two sources I gather the strong impression that whilst manufacturing was taking place in other countries, Britain was clearly top dog, or at least seen by the British to be top dog. This was about to change, or perhaps change had already begun.
The first evidence I draw upon is what became known as the American System of Manufacturing and I explore this on the following link. The conclusion I draw is that, whilst America was clearly highly influential, it learnt from the British experience. So, what of other countries?
Some work has been done on the manufacturing histories of European nations and here is a link. From this I was led to explore Germany and first of all German steel which is synonymous with the name Krupp. It is a story for me full of surprises as you can discover by following this link.
In the middle of the nineteenth century Britain, Germany and Belgium were exporting steel to the recently united states of America. For a nation now independent of its colonial masters, this was unacceptable and kicked started a steel industry of exceptional vitality and innovation. You can read about it by following this link.
Electricity was the area where America wielded the greatest influence, but not entirely as I show in the link.
Finance is an odd one since bankers did help shape the manufacturing world, but they were definitely not only British and British banks often looked down on the world of manufacturing. Follow this link for my exploration of finance for manufacturing.
An area of influence from the nineteenth century onwards is inward investment where manufacturing companies of other nations choose to set up in the UK or buy a UK company. I have tried to identify some of the more prominent examples in this link.
British Manufacturing History 