Power geometries: Social networks and the 1930s multinational corporate elite

Abstract This paper employs the concept of power geometries that has been applied in analyses of today’s corporate elite and the globalisation of the economy to explore the networks of an economic actor who ran British multinational companies in the early 1930s. By focusing on the contacts engendered by the Bank of England director who was appointed in 1931 as the 30th governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company in order to rescue this most emblematic of imperial trading companies, we examine not only the architecture of the web of connections within which both the company and its governor were embedded, but also the ways in which channels of interaction and communication were actually used. We show that while structural analyses of multiple and interlocking directorships offer a useful initial means of understanding power geometries, more detailed, ‘thick description’ approaches, based on archival material, reveal that not all apparent links were active and, in the case of the early-20th century multinational elite, networks appear to have embraced a much broader array of contacts. These extended in both social and geographical space well beyond the corporate boardrooms of London.