Aurora Gomez-Galvarriato Networks and Entrepreneurship: The Modernization of the Textile Business in Porfirian Mexico In Mexico, as in other parts of the world, the introduction of modern transportation and communications brought about major changes in the production and distribution of goods and in firms' management and structure. Between 1880 and 1910, the Mexican textile sector was modernized through the efforts of entrepreneurial French immigrants from Barcelonnette, whose closely knit network enabled them to succeed in over- coming limitations in the Mexican institutional framework. I n late-nineteenth-century Mexico, new steamship lines and railroad networks greatly reduced transport costs and permitted the growth of modernized retailing and manufacturing firms. As in other parts of the world, department stores and hydroelectric-powered integrated textile mills began to emerge. However, this transformation took place in ways that were adapted to the country's institutional, social, political, and cultural environment. 1 AURORA GOMEZ-GALVARRIATO is professor in the Department of Economics of the Centra de Investigation y Docencia Economicas, A.C. in Mexico City. 1 Alfred D. Chandler Jr. has written that the combined impact of technology and market growth facilitated the rise of U.S. managerial business enterprises during the late nineteenth century. In textiles, a labor-intensive industry, the large, integrated firm had few competitive advantages. However, the emergence of large-scale manufacture in the New England textile industry, carried out by limited liability corporations, has been considered part of the same process. See Alfred D. Chandler Jr., Scale and Scope: The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism (Cambridge, Mass., 1990), 235-94; and William Lazonick, Competitive Advantage on the Shopfloor (Cambridge, Mass., 1990). However, firms in diverse countries and regions adapted to the new technologies in various ways, depending on the particular conditions they faced. Regional variations in the textile industry have been studied by Phillip Scranton, who exam- ined its evolution in Philadelphia, and by Mary B. Rose, who has written about its history in Great Britain. See Phillip Scranton, Proprietary Capitalism: The Textile Manufacture at Phil- adelphia, 1800-1885 (Cambridge, U.K., 1983); Mary B. Rose, Firms, Networks, and Busi- ness Values (Cambridge, U.K., 2000). Business History Review 82 (Autumn 2008): 475-502. © 2008 by The President and Fellows of Harvard College.