[Main Blog Post] How the Cost of Freight Has Shaped the World

[jprussell]

Short post this week where I barely scratch the surface of what I suspect will be a big, deep topic - how cheap transportation has been the less obvious, but maybe just as important, side of the industrial revolution next to mass production.

Comments

[k_a_nitz]

Distribution was a lot more important historically than people realise. During the Napoleonic wars France blockaded English access to Scandinavia for trees to make the masts on its ships. As a result England switched to sourcing the wood from North America. But the ships bringing the wood back needed something to take on the journey there to allay the costs. Given the size of the North American market at the time bulk goods weren't really a very profitable option, so they took people - cheap fares for immigrants (see James Belich's Replenishing the Earth).

At the end of WWII New Zealand had one of the highest per capita incomes in the world (#1 or #2 from memory). This was built on the global distribution of agricultural goods - primarily meat, wool, and butter. Similarly for Argentina in its heyday, supplying animal products to Europe. For New Zealand in particular the lack of a large population has always meant that the costs of distribution have been much higher (effectively paying much more or piggy-backing partly off shipping to Australia), thus providing an additional driver for becoming a lower cost producer of animal products, if not the lowest. Take away the global distribution though and the landscape of New Zealand would be transformed back to that of the mid 19th century - marginal land, and some not so marginal, would almost certainly be left to revert to forest (NZ exports about 95% of its dairy production - who would drink all that milk if we couldn't export it?). The alternative would be mass migration at an unheard-of level (over 20% of the population of the largest city, Auckland, are already foreign-born and the housing market hasn't coped with that) - and the ability to build housing for those numbers is doubtful.

Whilst large populations can provide their own demand (the % of exports in the economy of the USA is fairly small, and China and India have the populations to act as a flywheel for their economy), for some of the major goods exporting countries the loss of global distribution would be world shattering in its effects.

Rolf Peter Sieferle wrote in one of his books (can't recall which off the top of my head) about the costs of transport in the absence of oil (which he called the subterranean forest), starting with the costs of a horse or oxen driven wagon, which needs to carry twice the feed required for the horses/oxen(and driver!) so they can return, and thus that needs to be deducted from what it can transport. He showed that this limited the effective circle of distribution significantly and also explains why navigable rivers (and later canals) were so important to trade.

[jprussell]

Thanks very much for this, especially the sources you mentioned, I will have to check those out.

I had no idea New Zealand was such a large agricultural exporter, but I suppose that makes sense the way you've described it.

And yeah, I had encountered some talk about the trouble with animal-based transport being limited by the need to bring food along or else have places you could reliably get it along the way. I'm also used to coming at this question in a military context, as supply lines and camp followers have always played a huge role in martial contexts. One book that I just realized assumes cheap transport for its recommendations is The Soldier's Load and the Mobility of a Nation by S.L.A. Marshall - he was all for having soldiers carry minimal gear, mostly fighting equipment, and then bring other needed supplies up by jeep. Hmm, I may have to look at it again sometime.