‘Riches beyond the dreams of avarice?’: commerical returns on British warship construction, 1889‐1914

The contracts for naval warships placed in private shipyards in the nineteenth century provide an early example of state procurement policy. It has been widely argued that these contracts allowed the firms concerned to earn unusually high profits, although the evidence provided has been very limited. This article analyses the effects of naval warship contracts on the profitability of the dominant suppliers during the ‘naval arms race’ of 1889-1914 in order to provide new and more systematic evidence on the workings of an early form of regulation and on a tangible aspect of the relationship between firms and the British government.