Opening to the East: Shipping Between Europe and Asia, 1770-1830

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: HOGENT University College of Applied Sciences & Arts; Vrije Universiteit Brussel; University Saint-Louis - Bruxelles
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0507
• DOI: 10.1017/S0022050713000569
• 发表日期: 2013
• 页码: 625-661
• 关键词: globalization; PRODUCTIVITY; TRADE

摘要

Shipping costs between Europe and Asia were reduced by two-thirds between the 1770s and the 1820s. Copper sheathing and other technical improvements which allowed ships to make more frequent voyages over longer lifetimes accounted for part of the cost reduction. British hegemony in the Indian Ocean, which ended an eighteenth-century arms race, accounted for the rest by allowing the substitution of smaller ships which cost less to build and required fewer men per ton. These changes were at least as important as the elimination of monopoly profits in narrowing intercontinental price differentials during the early nineteenth century.