FIGURE 15.1 British Foreign Investment in the United States, 1876 British investment was an important source of funding for westward expansion following the Civil War. Nearly half of all British loans went toward financing railroad construction, which required large capital expenditures. The British also invested heavily in government bonds and to a lesser extent in cattle ranching and mining enterprises.Source: Data from Mina Wilkins, The History of Foreign Investment in the United States to 1914 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 164.