Editors' Note

The articles in this issue of Business History Review consider central themes of the journal, including globalization and the role of governments. Two articles look specifically at multinational enterprises in the first wave of globalization from the mid-nineteenth century to the end of the 1920s. Simon Ville and David Tolmie Merrett describe the unexpectedly diverse international business community in Australia in the years before World War I in their article, “Investing in a Wealthy Resource-Based Colonial Economy.” In “The Case of the Global Wine Industry, 1850–1914,” Teresa da Silva Lopes, Andrea Lluch, and Gaspar Martins Pereira analyze an industry that proved an exception to a period of increasing globalization. William P. Kennedy and P. J. R. Delargy look at government policy to promote the development of a national industry during this time of increasing globalization, the late nineteenth century, in their article, “Capital Markets and the Launch of the British Electrical Industry, 1882–1892.” Two other articles in the issue focus on the decades after the end of World War II. Pierre-Yves Donzé considers the role of multinationals, looking specifically at Nestlé, in the early decades of the Cold War, in “The Advantage of Being Swiss.” Anna Spadavecchia examines the role of government subsidies intended to develop national industrial districts to ensure international competitiveness in her article, “Evidence from Postwar Italy.”