Transregional trade infrastructures in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

Technological advances in products and processes – particularly in the fields of communication and transport technologies, that is to say the Internet and the digital revolution, global air traffic, and the containerization of cargo transport – are viewed alongside economic, demographic, and political processes as primary causes of present-day globalization. The reduction in transport costs owing to the expansion of transport infrastructure and increased efficiency in transport services has not made ‘space’ irrelevant. However, it changes the relations between spatial units. Technological progress, therefore, does not make space irrelevant, but it does change the relationships between spaces by creating new spatial hierarchies. Some historians label interconnections that existed between Greeks, Persians, Romans, Arabs, and Chinese prior to 1500 as ‘archaic’ globalization. The transition to railroads was the primary reason for increased efficiency in land transport. The development of transregional, intercontinental trade, therefore, depended primarily on ocean shipping.

Archaeology · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History