(^280) THE WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS
new employers. No matter. His son-in-law set up as a machine builder,
and when in 1807 William's contract expired, he opened his own shop
in Liège, an age-old center of metallurgical crafts.
In 1813, William Cockerill turned the business over to his youngest
son John, who diversified into heavy equipment: hydraulic presses,
steam engines, pumps. By this time Belgium had been annexed to Hol-
land, whose king looked upon the Cockerill firm as a jewel in his
crown: "Continue your grand enterprises without fear and remember
that the king of the Netherlands always has money at industry's ser-
vice." With this and other, more material encouragements, John Cock-
erill went on to wider achievements—iron smelting, construction of
steamboats and locomotives, a zinc mine near Aachen (nearby in Ger-
many), woolen mills in Prussia, a cotton mill in Barcelona, a sugar re-
finery in Surinam, blast furnaces in southern France, shops, factories,
and railway projects in far-off Russia. The trouble with this global en-
trepreneur, though—a Frenchman called him "a Liégeois of English
descent better described as a tremendous mind without a country"—
was that his eyes were too big for his means. In spite of substantial bank
support, he went bust in the crisis of 1839-40 and died soon after. The
firm was then reorganized—a monument more enduring than bronze
and the lives of its creators.^11
Like the Cockerills, but anonymously ordinary, most British expa-
triates were workmen drawn by wages that ran twice and three times
higher than at home. (British wages were ordinarily considerably
higher than those across the Channel, but these experienced craftsmen
and mechanics were scarce commodities in follower countries.) Some
of them had actually been sent on mission by manufacturers and ex-
porters, to accompany engines and keep them working, and then found
themselves more cherished abroad than at home. Many more were
lured by old shop comrades, come back to recruit.
Most of this, remember, violated British law. In an effort to dis-
courage foreign competition, Britain had prohibited the export of most
machinery (though not steam engines) and the emigration of skilled ar-
tisans. In this, Britain was following an immemorial tradition. In me-
dieval Italy, for example, the glassworkers of Murano and the
shipwrights of the Arsenal in Venice emigrated only on pain of death.
Such constraints delayed the diffusion of knowledge, but in a world of
rudimentary surveillance, could not prevent it. So with Britain: hun-
dreds, even thousands, of craftsmen emigrated during those early
decades of the nineteenth century, most of them voluntarily. A few
were captured in war.
nora
(Nora)
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