Electrifying an Existing International Division of Labor: The Emergence of Multinational Firms in a Science-Based Technology – 1882–1937

The modern electric utility that triggered the third technological revolution in 1882 was inaugurated in New York, United States – indication of hegemonic transition. Hausman et al. (Global electrification: multinational enterprise and international finance in the history of light and power, 1878–2007. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2008) show that expansionary forces related to electricity involved multinational companies, agents of initial electrification of peripheric regions. Electrification presented new challenges to peripheric countries: given its science-based nature, assimilation required new institutions, such as higher education schools – for electrical engineers –; and, considering the capital-intensity of the needed investments, larger financial resources. The answer to these challenges depended on political conditions, that once improved led to larger involvement of domestic resources of India, China, Russia, Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. Chapter 5 evaluates how the interactions between a new form of expansionary force – multinational companies – and political changes at the periphery – Independence, elements of economic planning, industrial policies – led to different intensities of spread of electrification. The uneven arrival and spread of electrification at the periphery added another level of different overlapping among the various technological revolutions – in some regions the first textile plant was electric – and a new phenomenon – the superposition of backwardnesses.