The history of MNCs is closely related to the history of colonialism. Some of the first multinationals were directed by European monarchs in order to conduct expeditions. Many of the colonies that were not held by Spain or Portugal were under the administration of some of the world’s earliest multinationals. The East India Company, which showed up in as early as 1660, founded by the British, was one of them. It was headquartered in London and took part in international trade and exploration with trading posts in India. Some other examples include the Swedish Africa Company, founded in 1649, and the Hudson’s Bay Company, which was incorporated in Canada in the 19th century. However, the MNCs, as we know today, did not really appear until the 19th century. That was due to the rise of industrial revolution. The development of the factory system; that is, capital-intensive manufacturing processes, combined with better storage techniques and faster transportation, rapidly brought about the emergence of many MNCs. During the 19th and early 20th century, the search for natural resources and pressure to protect or increase markets drove transnational expansion by companies almost exclusively from the United States and Western Europe. As also understood from the information given, all statements with regard to the history of MNCs in the options are correct, so the correct answer is E.

Right after the Second World War, the United States-based MNCs heavily dominated foreign markets for a few years. Then from the 1950s on, European and Japanese MNCs started to show up and in time, they quickly increased in number. At the same time, major technological advances in shipping and communication accelerated the expansion of these MNCs almost all over the world. By the early 1970s, major MNCs had come to control about 70-80 percent of the world trade outside the centrally planned economies. Over the past half century, particularly after the end of the Cold War, there has been an obvious proliferation of MNCs. For example, while in 1970, there were some 7.000 parent MNCs, today that number has jumped to roughly 38.000. Approximately 90 percent of them is based in the industrialized world, controlling over 207.000 foreign subsidiaries. The large number of MNCs can be somewhat misleading, however, since the wealth of MNCs is actually concentrated among the top 100 firms (Greer and Singh, 2018).