Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Boxes
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction: scarcity and frontiers
- 2 The Agricultural Transition (from 10,000 BC to 3000 BC)
- 3 The Rise of Cities (from 3000 BC to 1000 AD)
- 4 The Emergence of the World Economy (from 1000 to 1500)
- 5 Global Frontiers and the Rise of Western Europe (from 1500 to 1914)
- 6 The Atlantic Economy Triangular Trade (from 1500 to 1860)
- 7 The Golden Age of Resource-Based Development (from 1870 to 1914)
- 8 The Age of Dislocation (from 1914 to 1950)
- 9 The Contemporary Era (from 1950 to the present)
- 10 Epilogue: the Age of Ecological Scarcity?
- Index
- References
7 - The Golden Age of Resource-Based Development (from 1870 to 1914)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Boxes
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction: scarcity and frontiers
- 2 The Agricultural Transition (from 10,000 BC to 3000 BC)
- 3 The Rise of Cities (from 3000 BC to 1000 AD)
- 4 The Emergence of the World Economy (from 1000 to 1500)
- 5 Global Frontiers and the Rise of Western Europe (from 1500 to 1914)
- 6 The Atlantic Economy Triangular Trade (from 1500 to 1860)
- 7 The Golden Age of Resource-Based Development (from 1870 to 1914)
- 8 The Age of Dislocation (from 1914 to 1950)
- 9 The Contemporary Era (from 1950 to the present)
- 10 Epilogue: the Age of Ecological Scarcity?
- Index
- References
Summary
… we begin to understand why some tropical countries responded swiftly to the growth of world demand after 1880, while others did not. Response was swiftest where new land was available for cultivation, whether by large or small farmers, and where the government removed obstacles to access (ownership, transportation, irrigation) … The fastest growth would be found (just as in the temperate zones) in areas with new land plus immigrant labour (e.g. Malaya, Brazil, Ceylon) or areas with access to new land and surplus labour time (Thailand, Burma, Colombia, Gold Coast). The slowest growth would be in countries where little new land was cultivated, whether because the population was already dense (India, Java) or because the government did nothing to break the land monopoly (Venezuela, Philippines).
(Lewis 1970, p. 28)Rapid export expansion in regions of recent European settlement and in important parts of the eight tropical countries had in common the geography of a moving frontier. In the New World migrant labour and foreign capital were drawn to this frontier as complements … But in the tropics migrants could be attracted to frontier areas for no more than a subsistence wage plus some mark up rather than a European standard of living as required in the New World. An important reason why foreign capital did not flow to the eight tropical areas to seek cheap migrant labour was that this labour was so cheap as effectively to substitute for capital so long as natural resources were highly abundant and used in large quantities.
(Huff 2007, p. i146)Introduction
On May 16, 1869 at Promontory Summit, Utah, a single golden spike was struck, joining the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railways. For the first time, the American western frontier was now linked by a single transcontinental railway line.
Six months later, halfway across the world in Egypt, an official ceremony on November 17, 1869 opened the 101-mile Suez Canal connecting the Mediterranean and Red Seas. The effect of the canal was to shorten major shipping routes between Europe and Asia by thousands of miles.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Scarcity and FrontiersHow Economies Have Developed Through Natural Resource Exploitation, pp. 368 - 462Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010