Abstract
The title of this volume presents shipping as ‘the world’s key industry’, but this primarily reflects the insiders’ view of the role of shipping. In mainstream economic history and economics, however, another, less advantageous epithet would be more fitting, namely ‘the invisible industry’. Maritime transport has never played a central role in the main academic debates of economic history or economics.3 At the same time, all the chapters in this volume have shown that shipping has been crucial to the emergence of a global economy.
Firms that have relocated their production of manufactured goods do not see shipping costs as an obstacle… The cases in which shipping is cited as a barrier are those relating to transit times, and therefore to distance, in terms of speed of transport, and not to freight costs.2
Financial support from the Research Group of the Basque Government IT337-10 is acknowledged.
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Notes
For an excellent discussion of why this has been the case, see F. Broeze (1989) ‘From the Periphery to the Mainstream: The Challenge of Australia’s Maritime History’, The Great Circle, 11, 1, pp. 1–14.
J. Lucassen and R. W. Unger (2011) ‘Shipping, Productivity and Economic Growth’, in R. W. Unger (ed.) Shipping and Economic Growth, 1350–1850 ( Brill: Leiden ), pp. 4–44.
L. R. Fischer and H.W. Nordvik (1986) ‘Maritime Transport and the Integration of the North Atlantic Economy, 1850–1914’, in W. Fischer, H. McInnis and J. Schneider (eds) The Emergence of a World Economy, Vol. II ( F. Steiner: Wiesbaden) discuss ‘efficient markets’ primarily in the context of distribution of capital; we interpret this element slightly differently.
Y. Kaukiainen (2008) ‘Growth, Diversification and Globalization: Main Trends in International Shipping Since 1850’, in L. R. Fischer and E. Lange (eds), International Merchant Shipping in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: The Comparative Dimension ( St John’s: IMEHA ).
H. Varian (2007) ‘An iPod has Global Value. Ask the (Many) Countries that Make It.’ New York Times, 28 June 2007.
Directorate for Science, Technology and Industry The Role of Changing Transport Costs. See also R. Feenstra (1998) ‘Integration of Trade and Disintegration of Production in the Global Economy,’ Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol. 12, No. 4, pp. 31–50
and S. Arndt and H. Kierktowski (eds) (2001) Fragmentation: New Production Patterns in the World Economy ( Oxford: OUP ).
P. L. Cottrell (1980) Industrial Finance, 1830–1914 ( London: Methuen );
S. P. Ville (1993) ‘The Growth of Specialization in English Shipowning, 1750–1850’, Economic History Review, 46, 4, pp. 702–22;
and J. M. Valdaliso (2000) ‘The Rise of Specialist Firms in Spanish Shipping and Their Strategies of Growth 1860 to 1930’, Business History Review, 74, 2, pp. 267–300.
G. Boyce (1995) Information, Mediation and Institutional Development. The Rise of Large-Scale Enterprise in British Shipping, 1870–1919 ( Manchester: Manchester University Press );
G. Jones (2000) Merchants to Multinationals. British Trading Companies in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries ( Oxford: Oxford University Press). Anyway, there is a substantial difference between tramp shipping, where economies of scale existed at the ship’s level, and liner shipping, where those economies to a larger extent occurred at the fleet level.
M. Stopford (2007) Maritime Economics, 2nd edn ( London: Routledge). At least since Knight we know that the greater the risk the more important is the role of entrepreneurs and the higher the returns may
be: F. Knight (1921) Risk, Uncertainty and Profit (Boston: Houghton Mifflin).
See D. C. North (1960) ‘The United States Balance of Payments, 1790–1860’, in Trends in the American Economy in the Nineteenth Century: Studies in Income and Wealth, Vol. 24 (Princeton: Princeton University Press), pp. 575–6
J. F. Shepherd and G. M. Walton (1972) Shipping, Maritime Trade and the Economic Development of Colonial North America ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press ), pp. 135–6.
G. Harlaftis, H. Thanopoulou and I. Theotokas (2009) The Present and the Future of Greek Shipping ( Athens: Academy of Athens), chapter 6.
For an attempt at remedying this, see P. Krugman (1993) Geography and Trade ( Cambridge: MIT Press).
L. R. Fischer (2010) ‘Are We in Danger of Being Left with Our Journals and Not Much Else?: The Future of Maritime History’, The Mariners’ Mirror, 97, 1, pp. 366–81.
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© 2012 Gelina Harlaftis, Stig Tenold and Jesús M. Valdaliso
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Harlaftis, G., Tenold, S., Valdaliso, J.M. (2012). Epilogue: A Key Industry or an Invisible Industry?. In: Harlaftis, G., Tenold, S., Valdaliso, J.M. (eds) The World’s Key Industry. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137003751_15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137003751_15
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