Overseas investment and the professional advance of British metal mining engineers, 1851-1914
The last few years have witnessed a growing appreciation among students of international business of the extensive British involvement in overseas mining in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In examining the leading role of the City of London in mining finance and speculation, van Helten has shown that between 1880 and 1913 some 8,408 companies were registered in Britain for mining and mine exploration abroad. Many of these companies were of little consequence, and it is hard to estimate with any precision the amount of cash actually invested, as Harvey and Taylor have demonstrated in their work on foreign direct investment in Spain.^ Nonetheless, it is clear that the overseas mining investment boom was of great consequence and that Australia, Africa, Europe, Asia, North America and South America all proved attractive to British mining entrepreneurs and investors. British-owned companies, for example, accounted for 60 per cent of the world's output of gold in 1898, and by 1914 '20 of the world's largest copper mines, a quarter of the tin output of the Straits Settlement and Malay States and 60 per cent of the Chilean nitrate industry was owned and controlled by British-based firms.'"* McCarty estimates the rate of investment in companies operating overseas to be around £9 million a year in the 1880s, £20 million a year in the 1890s, and £10.5 million a year in 1902-14.'* The thrust of scholarship has been towards explaining why British mining entrepreneurs and investors moved overseas so vigorously. However, while considerable attention has been paid to the resource needs of British industry and to finance, speculation, and the activities of prominent businessmen, relatively little attention has been paid to the people whose technical skills made possible expansion on a global scale. Much remains to be said about the activities of British mining engineers abroad: about their training, recruitment, movements, careers, rewards, and professional standing. This article explores these topics, and in particular focuses on the emergence.