Peter Davies (economic historian)

Peter N. Davies (born in Birkenhead on 14 July 1927, died in Caldy, Wirral on 19 March 2020)[1][2] was a British economic historian with interests in the port of Liverpool, sea-based trade with West Africa, the Canary Islands and Japan, the international fruit trade and the military history of the River Kwai campaign in World War II.

"The Business, Life and Letters of Frederick Cornes : Aspects of the Evolution of Commerce in Modern Japan, 1861-1912" (Global Oriental: ISBN 1-905246-34-X) was published in September 2008.

In this book Davies examined the surprisingly well-preserved papers of Frederick Cornes, a merchant from Cheshire, England who spent much of his life trading in Japan's port city of Yokohama during and after the Meiji Restoration, including the entire correspondence of "Cornes and Company" extending over a forty-year period in the early years of Anglo-Japanese trade.

Davies had come to know Futamatsu through his research for the 1991 biography of Philip Toosey "The Man Behind the Bridge" and secured his agreement that his memoirs could be published in English after his death.

[6] The book is therefore a rare account from the Japanese viewpoint of the construction of the Thai-Burma Railway (and the River Kwai Bridge) during World War II.