Foreign Multinationals in British Manufacturing, 1850-1962 FRANCES BOSTOCK AND GEOFFREY JONES University of Reading I This article presents new evidence on the dimensions and characteristics of foreign multinational investment in British manufacturing between 1850 and 1962. Although such investment was considerable, and had a large impact on several British industrial sectors, research on the period before British official statistics began in the early 1960s has remained limited. The study begins with a brief review of the importance of foreign multinationals to the British economy. This is followed by a description of a new database on inward investment. The main part of the article provides an analysis of the flow of foreign multinational investment into Britain between 1850 and 1962, followed by an examin- ation of some of its most important characteristics at benchmark dates. II During the 1980s and 1990s, the re-industrialisation by Japanese-owned companies of parts of British industry, notably motor vehicles and consumer electronics, has focused attention on the role of foreign multinationals in the British economy. Not surprisingly, a large litera- ture has developed on the impact of foreign multinationals on the contemporary British economy.* In contrast, there remain few studies of the origins and growth of inward FDI into Britain before the 1960s. This reflects the much smaller overall size of foreign multinational activity in Britain compared to the more recent past, as well as the difflculties of researching a period when no official British statistics whatsoever exist. Nevertheless, it is well-established that Britain's pos- ition as an important host economy for foreign multinationals goes back to the nineteenth century. It was very often the preferred first location in Europe of the pioneer American multinationals of that era, as it was to be for Japanese companies later. And American - and other European - firms acquired leading positions in certain British manufac- turing activities decades before the first Japanese manufacturing multi- national began production in Britain in 1969.