Very grateful to Andrew Popp, our anonymous referees and everyone at Enterprise & Society for making the publishing process an enjoyable experience

The full dataset of digitised DoDs (1882, 1892, 1902, and 1912) is available here: repository.cam.ac.uk/items/dbb91a...

We also looked at the role of financial institutions within the network, finding that interlocks with banks became less important over time, while insurance became an increasingly well-connected sector and linked between smaller local companies and larger internationals.

Using this large dataset, we were able to show how well connected the corporate sphere was at the turn of the 20th century. Networks based around industries rather than proximity became increasingly prominent.

In ‘Beyond the Elite’, we present our findings on the full population of company directors 1880s-1910s, based on the digitised Directory of Directors.