Why does the City of London, despite an apparent commitment to recruitment and progression based on objective merit within its hiring practices, continue to reproduce the status quo?
Written by a leading expert on diversity and elite professions, this book examines issues of equality in the City, what its practitioners say in public, and what they think behind closed doors.
Drawing on research, interviews, practitioner literature and internal reports, it argues that hiring practices in the City are highly discriminating in favour of a narrow pool of affluent applicants, and future progress may only be achieved by the state taking a greater role in organisational life. It calls for a policy shift at both the organisational and governmental level to the implications of widening inequality in the UK.
This ambitious collection follows the evolution of capitalism from its origins in 13th-century European towns to its 16th-century expansion into Asia, Africa and South America and on to the global capitalism of modern day.
Written by distinguished historians and social scientists, the chapters examine capitalism and its critics and the level of variation and convergence in its operation across locations. The authors illuminate the aspects of capitalism that have encouraged, but also limited, social responsibility and environmental sustainability.
Covering times, places and topics that have often been overlooked in the existing literature, this important contribution to the field of economic history charts the most comprehensive chronology of capitalism to date.
Debates about the origins and effects of European rule in the non-European world have animated the field of economic history since the 1850s. This pioneering text provides a concise and accessible resource that introduces key readings, builds connections between ideas and helps students to develop informed views of colonialism as a force in shaping the modern world.
With special reference to European colonialism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in both Asia and Africa, this book:
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critically reviews the literature on colonialism and economic growth;
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covers a range of different methods of analysis;
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offers a comparative approach, as opposed to a collection of regional histories, deftly weaving together different themes.
With debates around globalization, migration, global finance and environmental change intensifying, this authoritative account of the relationship between colonialism and economic development makes an invaluable contribution to several distinct literatures in economic history.
‘Being more like America again and less like Europe is the heart of the UK model of capitalism … [but] there are many respects in which Britain remains unlike America despite its strong appeal to the British political class ...’
In 'After Brexit' Andrew Gamble sets out the economic models and external relationships that Britain has pursued since the Second World War and examines the choices it now faces as it adjusts to life outside of the European Union.
This volume brings together this essay with some of Andrew Gamble’s most important and influential writings on British politics and political economy from the last forty years. They reflect on many of the issues that animate British politics, from the relative decline of the economy and the reshaping of the welfare state to the transformation of the Conservative and Labour parties and the changing constitutional order with the devolution of power to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
The volume is introduced by the author and includes his notes on each of the essays as well as an epilogue, which considers their original context and what has changed since. Taken together, the essays in this volume are testament to the acuity of one of Britain’s foremost political thinkers and provide rich insight into debates and ideas that continue to influence British politics and Britain’s place in the world.
A companion volume of Andrew Gamble’s essays, The Western Ideology and Other Essays, focusing on political ideas and ideologies, is also available from Bristol University Press.
informal recruitment techniques persisted well beyond that and in the years running up to Big Bang, any opening up was limited in scope. There is an argument that the City’s demographics during this period contributed both to the UK’s more general economic decline and its own capitulation to competition. In his influential book, The End of Gentlemanly Capitalism , 25 Philip Augar describes the failure of a generation of managers during the last century which led to their wholesale takeover by US investment banks. He attributes this in part to a lack of skills
’, contribut- ing to widespread acknowledgment that the imperialism of the nineteenth century was increasingly both direct and indirect as the century wore on (Robinson and Gallagher 1953). Blanken’s reductive treatment of ‘Marxist’ approaches ignores a very long tradi- tion (see, for example, Hudis and Anderson (2004), Arrighi (1978)), two proponents of which, Immanual Wallerstein and Cain and Hopkin’s (2000) British Imperialism: 1699–2000, Blanken sites generously. It doesn’t appear that Cain and Hopkins’ argument regarding ‘gentlemanly capitalism’ has been understood
as the engine of world trade, generated the wealth that sustained the British political and economic system, determining the political economy of external relationships with and beyond the empire. This was service capitalism, or gentlemanly capitalism, rather than industrial capitalism or finance capitalism: services (including merchant banking, high finance, commerce, shipping and insurance – and a dynamic re-export trade) created a particular type of economic development and a strong fiscal-military state, along with a new form of rentier capitalism – capitalist
creditworthy. One of the poorest governments in the world, British India – poor in revenue per head – was also one of the most trusted borrowers in London. Colonialism explains the paradox. Recent scholarship has shed much light on this fiscal drive sustaining capital export and Britain’s transition to gentlemanly capitalism (Accominotti et al, 2011 ; Gardner, 2017 ). Geoffrey Jones adds to this story of service-sector growth the continuing prominence of merchant firms in Britain’s globalization. With roots in the so-called East India trade in textiles and indigo, as
cause of British decline is to be found in the formation and transmission of an anti-industrial and anti-enterprise culture through the schools, universities and professions. Key occupations for a modern industrial economy, particularly engineering and industrial management, lagged in status behind the professions, the public sector and the City of London. For some of its critics, this ‘gentlemanly capitalism’, which was averse to industry and technology, was further reinforced by the ascendancy of liberal welfarism over the British establishment and led, especially
, R. ( 2009 ) Markets, Trade and Economic Development in England and Europe, 1050–1550 , Aldershot: Ashgate. Burkhardt , J. and Priddat , B. (eds) (2000) Geschichte der Ökonomie , Frankfurt: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag. Cain , P.J. and Hopkins , A.G. ( 1986 ) ‘Gentlemanly capitalism and British expansion Overseas I: the old colonial system, 1688–1850’, Economic History Review , 39(4): 501–25. Carlos , A.M. and Nicholas , S. ( 1988 ) ‘“Giants of an earlier capitalism”: the chartered trading companies as modern multinationals’, Business
