Abstract
By 1914, over 35 per cent of Britain's net national wealth was held abroad: a proportion unequalled by any country before or since. This essay suggests that this substantial volume of overseas investment was by no means as harmful to the British economy as many earlier scholars have maintained. If the modern definition of foreign direct investment is used, namely that which involved control over the assets acquired, getting on for half of Britain's overseas investment stock turns out to have been direct, and hence the result of positive entrepreneurial effort, for example to secure raw materials abroad or to surmount tariff barriers. This general discussion is supplemented by estimates of the industrial and geographical composition of Britain's foreign direct investment.
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