British trading companies and tacit knowledge seeding: diversifying Japanese industrialisation, 1906–1918

Tom Learmouth

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: This paper analyses the broadening out of Japanese industrialisation into new sectors after the Russo-Japanese War. It does so by compiling new evidence to analyse the emergence of a rubber industry in Kobe – one which later swept global markets with rubber footwear in the inter-war period. Rubber manufacturing knowledge was seeded in Japan by British trading company H. & W. Greer, who established factories in Kobe for J. G. Ingram and Dunlop. In a process adhering closely to Steven Klepper’s heritage theory, workers who had acquired tacit rubber compounding knowledge from Ingram and Dunlop formed a string of Japanese spin-off firms which clustered around the two factories. This study emphasises the role of firm-specific foreign knowledge compatible with local conditions in latecomer development. It also improves our understanding of the role of British trading companies in the global spread of industrial knowledge during the first era of globalisation.

Keywords: Japenese industrialisation; British trading companies; rubber industry; Kobe; H. & W. Greer; J. G. Ingram; Dunlop; heritage theory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J01 N0 R14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 22 pages
Date: 2026-05-25
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in Business History, 25, May, 2026. ISSN: 0007-6791

Downloads: (external link)
https://researchonline.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/138071/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:138071

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().