Volume 53, Issue 1 -

The traditional Theory of International Economic Relations concentrates on issues like balance of payments, exchange rates, comparative price advantages, international competition and production sites, thereby neglecting political and cultural aspects like the role of the state, information and communication, path dependencies or behavioural pattern. The following contributions try to incorporate these aspects in different ways, regarding three focal points in historical perspective: case studies of bilateral and multilateral economic and business relations after 1945, the influence of interest groups and cartels within the EEC, and the impact of crisis and globalisation on entrepreneurial attitudes and activities.

At the end of the 1960s a statistical survey run by the Bundesbank , revealed that the Netherlands was the second largest foreign direct investor in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). Only the American multinationals, which had become the world’s most important foreign direct investors after the war, had invested more in the FRG at that time. However, Dutch multinational investments in Germany had a long history and developed largely before the Second World War, often against the odds. At the end of the 1930s Dutch investments had been even larger than the investments of all American multinationals in Germany combined. Directly after the war all Dutch assets were put under Allied control, however despite this the big Dutch multinationals - Unilever, Royal Dutch Shell, Philips, and AKU – were able to regain control over their investments at the end of the 1940s. From this point onwards they continued to further expand their interests in the neighbouring country. This paper addresses the question of how and why the major Dutch multinationals were able to regain their property, and then grow so luxuriantly in the FRG. It shows that historical continuities and path dependence played a key role in this, alongside favourable market conditions after the war. The outcome, however, was uncertain and depended partly on extensive lobby activities.

Germany and Turkey have a long tradition of trade and business relations. In addition to economic interests in the narrow sense (the export of German industrial goods in return for the import of raw materials and agricultural products from Turkey), political and strategic military considerations were also of prime importance. The following article is based on the assumption that trade and business relations between Germany and Turkey continued to be shaped by a primacy of politics in the post war period. It examines why the Federal Government and numerous West German export companies continued and even expanded trade with Turkey despite increasing risks: Turkey was becoming problematic with a growing balance of payments deficit accompanied by increasingly bad payment practice, the uncertain political situation in the Near East, the already lower attractiveness of imported Turkish goods on the West German market, in addition to some restrictive trade and investment conditions. The analysis focuses on the West’s strategic foreign policy interests during the Cold War, the political and economic safeguarding of economic relations at home, as well as on complex and conflict-ridden international interdependencies.

In the eyes of many Western entrepreneurs, the newly independent nations in Asia and Africa presented promising export markets for industrial and consumer goods, and they demonstrated an active interest in ‘developing’ those largely ‘untapped’ markets. Their entrepreneurial goals overlapped with the new nations’ effort to industrialize as quickly as possible. To achieve industrialization, many of them relied on the transfer of technologies and know-how as well as on credits from the industrial nations. Development aid provided such technical and financial help. It also allowed economically strong, exportoriented nations like the Federal Republic of Germany and the United States to promote their own economic interests abroad. Further, in the context of the Cold War, international trade and aid were used by the industrialized countries to influence the development paths of the former colonies, many of which were trying to follow a policy of non-alignment to stay free from political and economic dependencies. This article looks at the interconnection between development, trade, and aid by studying trade and aid relations between the Federal Republic of Germany and the United States with India in the 1950s and 1960s. The overarching interest lies in the question of how trade between the ‘First’ and the ‘Third’ World was influenced by and helped to shape the relations between North and South in the context of decolonization and the Cold War.

This article looks into the useof legal cartels in certain branches of industriesduring structural crises, exceptionally acknowledged by the European Commission. From the government’s point of view the advantage of such a crisis-cartel is that non state-money is invested, in order to save a branch of industry. The advantage for industry is a lower level of government interference, compared to state-aid and other schemes. The article explores the fate of the crisis-cartel on artificial fibers (1982–1985) in particular. Finally, the question is raised as to what extent states remember cartels as instruments for solving crises and saving finances whilst experiencing phases of financial stress such as the current one.

Political science writings and the economic or business history literature present very different accounts of the development of European organised business interests, including European industrial federations (Eurofederations), after the Second World War. The former highlight the growth of these groups in response to European political integration while the latter recount a story of decline as international cartels became less acceptable. Here we argue that these are partial and insufficient accounts: European trade associations offered a range of valuable services to its members which helped to make sense of and deal with the uncertainties of post-war Europe and the unknown quantity of European integration. In particular, we highlight knowledge transfer and pooling and their role as social networks.

The German Mittelstand (small to mid-sized family-owned firms) has rightly been called the backbone of the German economy. Less well examined is how some of these firms have transformed themselves into micromultinationals with production and sales subsidiaries in key regions around the world. The article examines the regeneration and internationalization of seven firms in order to derive some general propositions about the internationalization of medium-sized firms and identify major challenges facing the German Mittelstand since the 1970s. It argues that the “pull” of global market opportunities rather than the “push” of poor industrial location transformed such businesses. The 1993/94 unification crisis proved a major turning point. Unlike larger businesses, this internationalization was largely client and service driven, based on a narrow niche strategy, opportunities were often serendipitous, but the execution of internationalization was often strategically planned.

Since the beginning of the 1970s, democratic capitalist Western Europe as well as state-socialist Eastern Europe has faced the double challenge of the third – the electronic-digital – industrial revolution and the second globalization. This article discusses the consequences of the “great transformation” for the economic elites in both the ‘West’ and the ‘East’. The emerging convergences have undoubtedly contributed to the internationalization of the European economic elites; the question is how strong this tendency was (and is), and whether a new type of transnational business elites more or less separated from the national context has emerged, and if it has, which theoretical concepts can be used to characterizeand analyze them.

For a long time, it has been said that Rhine transport plays an important role in Dutch-German economic bonds. Nevertheless, these transport flows have never been the subject of statistical research. This essay aims to fill this gap for the period 1919–1933. To do so, it charts Dutch, German, Belgian and French freight traffic, both by Rhine barge and by train. This essay finds that Germany’s economic structure and international economic ties find a strong expression in the transport sector, with Germany’s economic heartland clearly being the Ruhr area. In fact, the Ruhr area can be identified as the production centre of a transnational economic region formed by the areas that encompass the Rhine river system. Although transport to and from Belgium and France was also concentrated on the (extended) Ruhr area, for both Germany as a whole and the Ruhr area in particular it was transport to and from the Netherlands – where the port of Rotterdam acted as the main distribution centre for this transnational Rhine economy – that was by a large margin the most important. Of all this transport, the vast majority was via Rhine shipping, truly making the Rhine the backbone of Dutch-German economic relations.

This article deals with the literature on German cartels in the heavy industry and their perception in scientific literature of the 19th and early 20th century, as well as in historical studies. The first part of this article starts with a short periodic overview of their development, followed by an overview of how the definition of cartels has evolved, and ends with an overview of contemporary and historical literature and the criticism each of them evoked. The second part of the article presents the central interpretations of the cartel movement in Germany. Finally, the article analyses the impact of cartels on competition and economic development and attempts to highlight the problems modern research should be aware of when analysing the significance of German cartels in the historical context, as well as the academic voids of modern research.

This paper offers a historical appraisal of recent developments in the theory of very long run growth, focusing on two main areas: (1) linkages between wages, population and human capital and (2) interactions between institutions, markets and technology. Historians as well as economists have recently begun to break away from the traditional practice of using different methods to analyse the world before and after the industrial revolution. However, tensions remain between the theoretical and historical literatures, particularly over the unit of analysis (the world or particular countries) and the role of historical contingency.