Conclusions

Abstract

The one certain conclusion that can be drawn from this all too brief survey is that there is much more to be discovered about the British entrepreneur in the nineteenth century. Charles Wilson’s observation remains valid: ‘let us not be in too much of a hurry to reach for the black cap: there is more evidence to come’.⁴² It is still dangerous to speak of ‘the British entrepreneur’. No such person exists. Over the century there were countless different entrepreneurs in a remarkable variety of trades and industries. Some, perhaps the majority at any one time, were first-generation entrepreneurs, striving to establish a manufacturing firm, a merchant house, a shipping line, and doubtless — if recent enquiries into the small firm are any guide⁴³ — imbued with enthusiasm and adventuousness; others were the descendants of the founders, apparently less ‘pushing’, more concerned with order, stability and the sheer mechanics of organisation, to whom the firm was less all-consuming of energy and time; and, during the closing decades of the century, there was a growing number of managers, perhaps from a different socio-economic background, operating within a different institutional framework, and apparently increasingly concerned with the attainment of different objectives.