Foreign Companies, Public Intervention, and Ecological Crisis: Water in Seville, 1871-1959

Abstract

[Abstract] This chapter seeks to analyse, from a business history perspective, the role played by British capital in the management of the water supply in Seville for almost seventy-five years through the company Seville Waterworks. Using primary business and public sources, it examines the origin of the company, its shareholding and organisational structure and business results, which were conditioned by demographics and rainfall, the different economic situations, and the public regulations, all within the framework of the evolution of the water sector in Spain and the British investment abroad.