David Kenneth Fieldhouse, FBA, is a prominent historian of the British Empire who between 1981 and 1992 held the Vere Harmsworth Professorship of Imperial and Naval History at the University of Cambridge.

The official history of Unilever as a business enterprise has already been written by Charles Wilson in The History of Unilever (2 volumes, London, 1954) and Unilever 1945-1965 (London, 1968) and, although there is some overlap, this book does not attempt to cover the same ground. But Wilson was prevented by shortage of space from writing a detailed account of the growth of Unilever as a multinational company, expanding through a multiplicity of over¬ seas subsidiary companies. My study is therefore complementary to his. Taking a limited number of overseas subsidiaries (eleven manu¬ facturing companies and two vegetable oil plantations), my object
is to test some of the generalised statements made about the character of direct foreign investment in less developed countries (LDCs). My position differs from that of Wilson in two other respects. First, my starting point and main interest lie in the colonial or ex-colonial territories in which these Unilever subsidiaries
operated, not in Unilever as a business organisation. Second, this book was not commissioned, is not official and the opinions expressed do not necessarily express Unilever’s views on any issue