John F. Wilson is Pro Vice-Chancellor (Business and Law) at Northumbria University at Newcastle, UK. He has published widely in the fields of business, management and industrial history, including ten monographs, six edited collections and over seventy articles and chapters.Steven Toms spent fifteen years in senior management at Nottingham University, UK, as head of the undergraduate programme, chair of teaching committee and research director before becoming Head of York Management School in 2004. Ian Jones is a Senior Research Assistant at Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University, UK.

• Introduction; 1 Protectionism and the growth of overseas multinational enterprise in interwar Britain; “Protectionism and the growth of overseas multinational enterprise in interwar Britain”: a retrospective; 2 The making of the First Czechoslovak Republic and the national control of companies: the nostrification policy and economic nationalism, 1918–1938; 3 The making of a puzzling industry: historical perspectives on Japan’s petrochemical industry; 4 Corporate governance and public policy: ‘new’ initiatives by ‘Old’ Labour to reform stakeholder behaviour in the UK, 1965–1969