[go: up one dir, main page]

IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/tcd/tcdceg/20014.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

After Columbus: Explaining the Global Trade Boom 1500-1800

Author

Listed:
  • K. H. O'Rourke
  • J. G. Williamson
Abstract
This paper documents the size and timing of the world inter-continental trade boom following the greate voyages in the 1490s of Columbus, da Gama and their followers. Indeed, a trade boom followed over the subsequent three centuries. But what was its cause? The conventionnal wisdom in the world history literature offers globalization as the answer: it alleges that declining trade barriers falling transport costs and overseas "discovery" explains the boom. In contrast, this paper reports the evidence that confirms unambiguously that there was no commodity price convergence between continents, something that would have emerged had globalization been a force that mattered. Thus, the trade boom must have been caused by some combination of European import demand and foreign export supply from Asia and the Americas. Furthermore, the behavior of the relative price of foreign importables in European cities should tell us which mattered most and when. We offer detailed evidence on the relative prices of such importables in European markets over the five centuries 1350-1850. We then offer a model which is used to decompose the sources of the trade boom 1500-1800.

Suggested Citation

  • K. H. O'Rourke & J. G. Williamson, 2001. "After Columbus: Explaining the Global Trade Boom 1500-1800," CEG Working Papers 20014, Trinity College Dublin, Department of Economics.
  • Handle: RePEc:tcd:tcdceg:20014
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.tcd.ie/Economics/TEP/2001_papers/TEPNo6KO21.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. repec:tcd:wpaper:tep9 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Kevin H. O'Rourke, Leandro Prados de la Escosura and Guilllaume Daudin, 2008. "Trade and Empire, 1700-1870," The Institute for International Integration Studies Discussion Paper Series iiisdp249, IIIS.
    3. Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson & James Robinson, 2005. "The Rise of Europe: Atlantic Trade, Institutional Change, and Economic Growth," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(3), pages 546-579, June.
    4. Kevin H. O'Rourke & Ahmed S. Rahman & Alan M. Taylor, 2007. "Trade, Knowledge and the Industrial Revolution," Development Working Papers 230, Centro Studi Luca d'Agliano, University of Milano.
    5. Jesper Roine & Daniel Waldenström, 2011. "Common Trends and Shocks to Top Incomes: A Structural Breaks Approach," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 93(3), pages 832-846, August.
    6. Kevin H. O'Rourke & Jeffrey G. Williamson, 2002. "From Malthus to Ohlin: Trade, Growth and Distribution Since 1500," CEG Working Papers 20023, Trinity College Dublin, Department of Economics.
    7. Peter H. Lindert & Jeffrey G. Williamson, 2002. "Mondialisation et inégalité : une longue histoire," Revue d’économie du développement, De Boeck Université, vol. 10(1), pages 7-41.
    8. Kevin H. O'Rourke, 2002. "Globalization and Inequality: Historical Trends," Aussenwirtschaft, University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science, Swiss Institute for International Economics and Applied Economics Research, vol. 57(01), pages 65-104, March.
    9. Kevin O'Rourke, 2005. "The worldwide economic impact of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars," Trinity Economics Papers 200059, Trinity College Dublin, Department of Economics.
    10. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/6149 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Wallis, Patrick, 2010. "Exotic drugs and English medicine: England’s drug trade, c.1550-c.1800," Economic History Working Papers 28577, London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Economic History.
    12. Johan Fourie & Jörg Baten, 2012. "Slave numeracy in the Cape Colony and comparative development in the eighteenth century," Working Papers 270, Economic Research Southern Africa.
    13. Cordoba, Juan-Carlos, 2007. "Malthus to Romer: On the Colonial Origins of the Industrial Revolution," MPRA Paper 4466, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Woosik Moon & Yeongseop Rhee, 2012. "Asian Monetary Integration," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 14191.
    15. Kevin H. O'Rourke, 2006. "War and Welfare: Britain, France and the United States 1807-14," Trinity Economics Papers tep2008, Trinity College Dublin, Department of Economics.
    16. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/6149 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. David Harvey & Neil Kellard & Jakob Madsen & Mark Wohar, 2012. "Trends and Cycles in Real Commodity Prices: 1650-2010," CEH Discussion Papers 010, Centre for Economic History, Research School of Economics, Australian National University.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • F14 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Empirical Studies of Trade
    • N7 - Economic History - - Economic History: Transport, International and Domestic Trade, Energy, and Other Services

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:tcd:tcdceg:20014. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Colette Angelov (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/detcdie.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.