Transnational Entrepreneurs in an English-Speaking World

In the past, middleman minorities expedited international trade from their world-spanning diasporas. Their languages, networks and business skills afforded them advantages in international trade. In the modern world, enabled by electronic communications and jet airplanes, transnational entrepreneurs enjoy resources of networks, languages and business skills comparable to those of the middleman minorities. The transnational entrepreneurs have enabled many more people to perform this trade-expediting role than was true in the past when only middleman minorities had the requisite resources. For this reason, transnational entrepreneurs have served as agents of globalisation. However, now that English has become the dominant business language of the world, the language skills of transnational entrepreneurs and middleman minorities alike have been to some extent superseded. Some evidence suggests that English-speaking countries need the language skills of immigrants more than do non-English-speaking countries in order to promote their exports.