This article aims to examine two principal aspects of France's organic chemical industry from the second half of the 19th century to World War I ; the first is the declining process of France's tar dye industry, and the second is the formation of French pharmaceutical industry during this period.
As for the first point, two cases will be investigated. Firstly, the Saint-Denis Company had to abandon the fabrication of synthetic alizarins in the 1880s, mainly because of stiff competition with German companies. Secondly, the Usines du Rhône Company discovered a new synthetic process of indigos at the turn of the century, and succeeded in licencing its patents to Hœchst Co.. But the adventure of the Usines du Rhône was doomed to fail, mainly because of the poor performance of this company's top management.
The case of the Usines du Rhône will also be useful for clarifying the second point. In spite of the failure in the field of tar dye industry, this company had successfully commercialized the synthetic pharmaceutical products such as salicylates, antipyrine and synthetic anesthic, as well as the synthetic perfume and the cellulose acetate just before World War I. In talking about the factors contributed to this development, emphasis will be placed on two points ; the renovation of the managerial system by the Société Générale Bank and this company's traditional eagerness to establish and maintain R & D laboratories, which were commonly held to has been little developed in France before World War I.

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The purpose of this paper is to clarify the characteristics of business activities of Standard Oil Co. (New Jersey) -the present name is Exxon Corp.-in the United Kingdom from right after World War II through the late 1950's.
The main characteristics were as follows :
(1) The Company was able to make most products with its new refinery in the U.K.. At the first the Company hesitated to build and operate the refinery because of some problems, especially uncertainty as to use of fereign exchange for remitting profits to the U.S.A. and other payments. But it had no choice but to do that in order to keep its position in the British market.
(2) The Company strenghened control over the retail market of gasoline, a main item among petroleum products, chiefly by extending network of exclusive outlets. But the primary motive to bring the network into its marketing channel did not directly come from marketing itself, but from refining. The Company needed enough and reliable outlets which helped to make operation of the refinery high level.
(3) The Company's local rifining depended on its operations (producing and purchasing crude petroleum) in the Middle East. But on the other hand the operation in the U.K. influenced them in the Middle East. Under the dollar shortage in the U.K., the Company could hardly use crude petroleum produced by Aramco for the refining because of its so-called dollar oil. The Aramco crude development program had already been reduced in the late 1940's.

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