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Foreign capital flowed continuously into Russian companiesand banks, until by 1914 about a third of theissued stock of Russian joint-stock companies (evenapart from banks) was estimated to be foreign-held.Of these foreign investments (i.e. apart from governmentloans) France again held a major share, about one-third.Great Britain and Germany were a close second and third,each supplying about one-fifth. Belgium, with herheavy investment in South Russian coal and ironcompanies, came fourth. French money went principallyinto mining and metallurgy; British into oil,gold and other mining concerns in Siberia and the Urals.German investment was more widely spread and wasnotably strong in the western fringes of the empire.Foreign capital, particularly French and German, alsofigured largely in the financing of Russian banks. It is,however, disputed whether this amounted to a predominanceof foreign influence. Only one importantbank was in majority foreign in its administration.There was much rivalry and opposition between thebanks classed as ' foreign.' Some of them in some fieldsworked in close connexion with the economic interestsof their nationals, but in other fields they did not.Armaments were keenly contested between French,British and Germans. E>own to about 1900 foreignbanking interests tended to organize industrial concernscontrolled and run by them and their foreign experts,but after 1900 their general role was that of accoucheurs:in the main they wanted commissions and dividends,not in addition actual control of firms. Thus foreign' daughter concerns,' with a few notable exceptions,played a minor role in Russian industry.(3) Tariffs were the third means by which the modernexpansion of Russian industry was assisted. Before theCrimean War Russia had lived behind a high protectivewall, except for the greater part of Catherine the Great'sreign and for a few years under Alexander I. After 1822there was a return to a system of high tariffs and prohibitions.Some reaction against extreme protectionismbegan already before the Crimean War, but it was theresultant internal crisis which made effective the ideas359