Building on Air

Since 2005, Raymond G. Stokes has held the Chair of Business History at the University of Glasgow, where he also serves as Director of the Centre for Business History in Scotland. His book The Business of Waste: Great Britain and Germany, 1945 to the Present (with co-authors Roman Köster and Stephen Sambrook) was published by Cambridge University Press in 2013. Ralf Banken is a Privatdozent at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt and a researcher in the Department of History at the University of Cologne.

• Introduction; Part I. Defining an Industry, 1886–1914: 1. From oxygen to industry; 2. Competition and cooperation in expanding markets to 1914; Part II. Seeking Equilibrium in an Age of Turbulence, 1914–60: 3. Strategy and structure: from the Great War to the 1930s; 4. The Great Depression, the Second World War, and the industrial gases industry; 5. Reinventing the industry starting in the 1950s; Part III. Mass Production, Specialization, and Internationalization, 1960–80: 6. Internationalization of the industry: the UK and the European continent in the 1960s and 1970s; 7. Internationalization of the industry: the US market and the re-entry of the Europeans in the 1970s; 8. Broadening the stage; Part IV. Concentration, Consolidation, and Competition, 1980–2006: 9. Contested markets and industry challenges in the 1980s; 10. Globalization and growth through the turn of the twenty-first century; Conclusions.

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