Private Companies, Culture and Place in the Development of Hull’s Maritime Business Sector, c.1860–1914

Abstract

Skip Fischer has suggested that maritime historians often fail to situate their studies ‘within the broader debates that animate discussion and research in the larger [historical] profession’.¹ While this may be true of many branches of the history discipline — Fischer cites Atlantic and gender history as examples — it is not so applicable to business history, a vibrant field that has long had an important maritime dimension. This is evident in the contributions of Francis Hyde, Peter Davies and Sheila Marriner — the Liverpool School of maritime business history — to our understanding of the role that companies play in the process of economic development.² It is also apparent in works relating to the development and regulation of shipowning as a specialist activity in particular localities during the early stages of industrialization in Britain.³ Building on, and combining, these two perspectives on the business of shipping, Gordon Boyce devised a ‘complementary yet alternative framework to Alfred D. Chandler’s transaction cost approach’.⁴ This alternative lay in Boyce’s focus on British shipping, which introduced a non-American, service sector element to the literature on patterns and processes of economic growth, which had hitherto been dominated by discussions relating to manufacturing industries in the USA. Others have followed in Boyce’s wake, with the work of Gelina Harlaftis and John Theotokas on family enterprise in the British and Greek shipping industries offering a notable European insight into the field as it has moved beyond the Harvard School and Chandler’s paradigm.⁵