the case of the synthetic dye industry, 1857–1914 - Maastricht ...

190 J.P. Murmann and E. Homburg
Fig. 4. Country shares of global firm population
rising from 24 firms in 1877 to 43 firms in 1897. This pattern is very different
from both France and Britain where such growth phases did not take place. A
substantial decline in the number of firms occurred in Germany much later than
in France. Between 1897 and 1907 there was a consolidation in the German dye
industry, and participation fell to the 1870s level of about 25 firms.
Small players: Switzerland and U.S.
Whereas synthetic dye production started in Switzerland at about the same time
(1859) it did in Germany and France, the first producer in the U.S. appeared
only in 1864. Just as Britain, Germany and France, Switzerland experienced a
steep growth from 1858–1862 when the number of firms increased from 0 to 8.
Parallel to the situation in France, a first decline set from 1862 to 1866 in which
the number of firms fell from 8 to 4. Between 1867 and 1873 the number of
firms increased again from 4 to 7. This is different from France where the number
of firms did not increase in the late 1860s and early 1870s, but was similar to
the German pattern of growth in the number of firms. From 1871 until the First
World War the number of firms was roughly the same in France and Switzerland,
but there was one important difference: on average the Swiss firms were larger
than their French counterparts. With a 7% share in world dye production in
1913, the Swiss dye industry had, to be sure, only one tenth of the size of their
German counter parts, but it was larger than the dye industry of countries with
a far greater population or textile industry, such as Great Britain (6.5% of world