Tobit Vandamme
Go to http://research.flw.ugent.be/nl/tobit.vandamme for the most recent information.
PhD Candidate (UGent: BOF - Special Research Fund, 2015-2019)
Master in History/Social Sciences (Universität Heidelberg - EHESS Paris, 2015)
Bachelor in History (Université catholique de Louvain, 2013)
UFO, Sint-Pietersnieuwstraat 35, 9000 Gent
room 130.012 (3rd floor)
Tel: +32.9.3310285
e-mail: tobit.vandamme(at)ugent.be
PhD-Project: Belgian multinational entrepreneurs in the first global economy: the business empire of Edouard Empain (1880-1914)
Supervisor: Eric Vanhaute
Abstract: In the four decades before the First World War, the world increasingly globalized, both economically, politically and culturally. A highly connected economy integrated distant parts of the world into one global market. Taking the Empain group as a case allows me to study Belgian businessmen and their multinational enterprises in the pre-WWI global economy from a business perspective. In this entangled world, what role could Edouard Empain, a prominent Belgian entrepreneur, play exactly? Building on financial sources and archive-based case studies, the dissertation focuses on economic opportunities, the role of nationality, the personal network as well as on corporate structure and control as determinants for Empain’s success. On the one hand, this research will investigate how Belgian business managed to be part of the global expansion wave in the decades before the First World War, despite its powerful imperial competitors. On the other hand, it will explore how Belgian multinationals, like their foreign counterparts, actively contributed to the establishment of a global market.
Research Interests
- Global History
- History of Globalization
- Social and Economic History
- Business History
- Comparative History of Empires
- Migration History
- History of the groupe Empain