A meeting of the Business History Conference in Toronto with “The Political Economy of Enterprise” as its theme provides an opportunity to consider some historical similarities and differences between the climates of enterprise in Canada and the United States. Because much of my recent work has been on financial development in the United States in the early decades, 1790–1840, I shall focus on that period. During that period, finance, enterprise, and economic development in the United States made great strides. Across the border in British North America, progress in all three areas was limited. The contrast sheds some light on the political conditions that favor financial development, flourishing enterprise, and modern economic growth.

This article traces the uneven development of English cheese-making from its early commercialization to the eventual triumph of the “cheese factory.” The narrative shows how contemporary actors initiated and adapted to changes in technology, distribution, consumption, and regulation. It indicates that artisanal practices have both borrowed from and become integrated with industrial logics and strategies, exemplifying a process that Charles F. Sabel and Jonathan Zeitlin termed the “recombinablility and interpenetration” of different forms of economic organization [World of Possibilities: Flexibility and Mass Production in Western Industrialization (Cambridge, U.K., 1997), 2–3]. International comparisons are introduced to clarify the reasons for England’s halting and idiosyncratic transition to industrial-scale cheese-making.

Few industries are as widely associated with the spread of American values, ideas, and products as the film industry. U.S. firms certainly dominated the global market for feature films, but did they do so simply by “selling America to the world” or was there more to be gained by catering to the diverse tastes of international audiences? This article examines the operations of a leading U.S. film distributor in its largest foreign market. United Artists, like other U.S. firms, was forced to offer a minimum proportion of British films for distribution in the United Kingdom in the 1930s and 1940s. Was this requirement a burden, or were the firm’s British films actually at the heart of its success in the U.K. market?

This article is a response to Patrick Fridenson’s call for more research into the life cycle of enterprises and especially into business failure. Its subject is the textile group established in 1945 by Cyril Lord, which went on to encompass merchanting, manufacturing, retailing, and finance, operating in the United Kingdom, the United States, and South Africa. Using unpublished records as well as the financial and trade press, the article explains the nature of Lord’s financial, mercantile, and manufacturing networks, and his rapid growth, based on product innovation, novel sales techniques, and massive advertising. The article then examines his subsequent insolvency and receivership in 1968. It contributes to our understanding of corporate failure and the role of the receiver, financial institutions, and government in that process.