Preface

Summary

This book is a cooperative effort by three authors – William J. Hausman, Peter Hertner, and Mira Wilkins – and Dominique Barjot, Jonathan Coopersmith, Kenneth E. Jackson, Pierre Lanthier, H. V. Nelles, John L. Neufeld, Harm Schröter, and Luciano Segreto. It attempts to understand how electric light and power facilities were established and how multinational enterprise and international finance have influenced the course of electrification around the globe. The three authors took the initiative in developing the project. Although electrification is basic to our daily lives, we were convinced that the international business and financial dimensions of its history had been underestimated. The authors assembled a superb group of experts, who have contributed much time and good advice. We were prompted by several considerations:

1. Although there was a huge literature on the spread of global electrification and on the manufacturing companies (the industrial firms), no one had dealt systematically with the history of multinational enterprise and finance in driving forward the lighting up of the world and in providing electric power. Thus, there was a gap to be filled. We wanted to write about the supply of electric light and power, about the utilities.

2. New emphasis on markets – liberalization, privatization, and restructuring from the late 1970s and particularly the 1980s onward – brought with it a resurgence of multinational-enterprise involvements in public utilities and a new globalization. We wanted to study the past in the context of the present because there were obviously historical precedents for today's activities.

3. For one of us (Wilkins), the only nonspecialist on electrification, there was an additional challenge. Wilkins had long been interested in the history of multinational enterprise and in its relationships to international finance. She had been considering forms and conduits in international transactions – that is, the actors involved in undertaking foreign investments. The history of electric utilities and their global spread would be a splendid testing ground. All the other participants in this project had written extensively on various cross-border as well as domestic aspects of electric public utilities. Wilkins was in the enviable position of being surrounded by knowledgeable individuals.

4. […]