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Seminario de investigación: Market Empire ties: British market hegemony in colonial Southeast Asia and its rivals’ reactions (1874-1913)
Por Alejandro Ayuso. UPNA
INARBE organiza este seminario que se celebrará el 13 de septiembre a las 12,00h. en la sala de conferencias del edificio Jerónimo de Ayanz.
Abstract
The present paper aims to compare the commercial dependence between colonies in Southeast Asia and their corresponding metropoli regarding two different kinds of colonizers. By means of a gravity model, we compare colonial imports bias between empires that applied imperial preferences like the French, Spanish (USA after 1898) or Portuguese on the one hand and on the other those that maintained free trade before WWI. Our results show that, opposing the scramble for Africa, in Southeast Asia geography was not relevant explaining patterns of colonial trade. Free trade colonies were more integrated with their metropoli since British manufactures were more competitive and penetrated in Spanish and French colonies. This would explain why from the 1890s the later empires opted for either imperial preferences or tariff assimilation in their colonies to compensate British initial advantages. As a result, dependence from the metropolis equalized among these different kinds of Empires in the last years before WWI. This exemplifies how political power can overcome competitiveness in the determination of historical trade flows.
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