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 Business Essays
The position of business elites at the top of the social hierarchy is ensured by the possession of three main assets: economic power, social prestige, and political influence. The combination of these three assets at their zenith was, for example, a characteristic feature of the financial aristocracy in Britain and France in the second half of the nineteenth century: Lords Rothschild and Revelstoke in the City of London, or Alphonse de Rothschild and Rodolphe Hottinguer in Paris, were certainly in this position, with their immense wealth, involvement in the biggest financial operations of the day, network of relationships in the highest society, and personal closeness to political power. Such a potent combination has become rarer in the course of the twentieth century, the strength of one asset tending to compensate for the weakness of another. A high social status, for example, associated with ancient lineage, has often made up for a declining economic position and vice versa.
Business history has become increasingly fragmented in the last two or three decades, developing along three quite separate lines of approach: economic (with questions of business strategy and business performance, etc.), social (businessmen's social origins and education, networks of relationships, etc.), and political (business interest groups, state intervention, etc.). Some studies have made use of more than one line of approach, and this is surely the way forward. However, integrating the three levels and taking account of the interaction between them is an essential, though extremely difficult, task.
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