Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T13:53:47.690Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

International trade in wheat and other cereals and the collapse of the first wave of globalization, 1900–38

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 February 2019

Gema Aparicio  and
Vicente Pinilla
Gema Aparicio
Affiliation:
14505 E. Walnut Run, Fort Wayne, IN 46814, USA
Vicente Pinilla*
Affiliation:
Universidad de Zaragoza, Department of Applied Economics and Economic History and Instituto Agroalimentario de Aragón (Universidad de Zaragoza-CITA), Faculty of Economics and Business Studies, Gran Via 4, 50005 Zaragoza, Spain. E-mail: aparicio4@gmail.com
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: vpinilla@unizar.es
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyse the dynamics of international trade in cereals, primarily wheat, in the first third of the twentieth century, with a special focus on the causes of the fall in exchanges and prices that took place in the 1930s. Developments over this period are compared with the general trade in food and agricultural products. An examination of the structure of the trade in wheat, maize, and rice shows the operation of their respective markets, giving special attention to the import and export flows between consumers and producers. To understand the functioning of the market for these products, the article examines the changes in supply, demand, and prices, and the emergence and development of intermediary companies in this business. The argument draws from a new database, based on the statistics published by the International Institute of Agriculture.

Keywords

agricultural protectionismglobalizationgrain tradeinternational agrifood tradewheat
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Global History , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , March 2019 , pp. 44 - 67
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

This study has received financial support from the Government of Spain, through its Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, project ECO2015–65582-P. It has also received backing from the European Social Fund and the Government of Aragon, through the Research Group S55_17R. We are grateful for the help provided by Domingo Gallego, Ángel González-Esteban, Michael Kopsidis, Javier Silvestre, and Patrick Svensson, and the comments received on its presentation to the 10th European Social Science History Conference and from two anonymous referees and the editors. Totals given in the tables have been calculated from rounded figures, so may differ slightly from the data totals. The usual disclaimers apply.

References

1 Findlay, Ronald and O’Rourke, Kevin H., Power and plenty: trade, war, and the world economy in the second millennium, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007 Google Scholar ; Jacks, David, ‘What drove 19th century commodity market integration?’, Explorations in Economic History, 43, 2006, pp. 383–412 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

2 Estevadeordal, Antoni, Frantz, Brian, and Taylor, Alan M., ‘The rise and fall of world trade, 1870–1939’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 118, 2, 2006, pp. 359–407 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

3 O’Rourke, Kevin H. and Williamson, Jeffrey G., Globalization and history: the evolution of a nineteenth-century Atlantic economy, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

4 Lewis, Arthur W., ‘The rate of growth of world trade, 1830–1973’, in Sven Grassman and Eric Lundberg, eds., The world economic order, London: Macmillan, 1981, pp. 11–74 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

5 Pinilla, Vicente and Isabel Ayuda, María, ‘Taking advantage of globalization? Spain and the building of the international market in Mediterranean horticultural products, 1850–1935’, European Review of Economic History, 14, 2, 2010, pp. 239–274 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

6 Tracy, Michael, Agriculture in western Europe: crisis and adaptation since 1880, New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1964 Google Scholar .

7 Aparicio, Gema, Pinilla, Vicente, and Serrano, Raúl, ‘Europe and the international trade in agricultural and food products, 1870–2000’, in Pedro Lains and Vicente Pinilla, eds., Agriculture and economic development in Europe since 1870, London: Routledge, 2009, pp. 52–75 Google Scholar .

8 Federico, Giovanni, ‘ Natura non facit saltus: the 1930s and the discontinuity in the history of European agriculture’, in Paul Brassley, Yves Segers, and Leen Van Molle, eds., War, agriculture and food: rural Europe from the 1930s to the 1950s , London: Routledge, 2012, pp. 15–32 Google Scholar .

9 Jacks, David S., ‘Intra and international commodity market integration in the Atlantic economy, 1800–1913’, Explorations in Economic History, 42, 2005, pp. 381–413 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Federico, Giovanni and Gunnar Pearsson, Karl, ‘Market integration and convergence in the world wheat market, 1800–2000’, in Timothy J. Hatton, Kevin H. O’Rourke, and Alan M. Taylor, eds., The new comparative economic history: essays in honor of Jeffrey G. Williamson, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007, pp. 87–114 Google Scholar ; Sharp, Paul and Weisdorf, Jacob, ‘Globalization revisited: market integration and the wheat trade between North America and Britain from the eighteenth century’, Explorations in Economic History, 50 1, 2013, pp. 88–98 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

10 Federico, Giovanni, ‘Market integration’, in Claude Diebolt and Michael Haupert, eds., Handbook of cliometrics, Heildelberg-Berlin: Springer, 2018 Google Scholar .

11 Williamson, Jeffrey G., ‘The impact of the Corn Laws just prior to repeal’, Explorations in Economic History, 27, 2, pp. 123–156 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Sharp, Paul ‘“1846 and All That”: the rise and fall of British wheat protection in the nineteenth century’, Agricultural History Review, 58, 1, pp. 76–94 Google Scholar .

12 Gallego, Domingo, ‘La formación de los precios del trigo en España (1820–1869): el contexto internacional’, Historia Agraria, 34, 2004, pp. 61–102 Google Scholar .

13 Turner, Michael, ‘Agriculture, 1860–’, in Roderick Floud and Paul Johnson, eds., The Cambridge economic history of modern Britain, volume III: economic maturity, 1860–1938, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 132–160 Google Scholar .

14 Michael Kopsidis, ‘Peasant agricultural and economic growth: the case of Southeast Europe c. 1870–1940 reinterpreted’, EHES Working papers in economic history, 28, 2012, http://www.ehes.org/EHES_No28.pdf (consulted 2 November 2018).

15 Turner, ‘Agriculture’.

16 Ingrid Henriksen, ‘The contribution of agriculture to economic growth in Denmark, 1870–1939’, in Lains and Pinilla, Agriculture and economic development, pp. 117–47.

17 O’Rourke, Kevin H., ‘The European grain invasion, 1870–1913’, Journal of Economic History, 57, 4, 1997, pp. 775–801 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Tracy, Agriculture in western Europe; Domingo Gallego, ‘Los aranceles, la política de comercio exterior y la estabilidad de la agricultura española (1870–1914)’, Revista Española de Estudios Agrosociales y Pesqueros, 198, 2003, pp. 9–74; Oliver Grant, ‘Agriculture and economic development in Germany, 1870–1939’, in Lains and Pinilla, Agriculture and economic development, pp. 210–33; Ernesto Clar and Vicente Pinilla, ‘Agriculture and economic development in Spain, 1870–1973’, in ibid., pp. 311–32; Nadine Vivier, ‘Agriculture and economic development in France, 1870–1939’, in ibid., pp. 178–209.

18 ‘The level of protection was not high enough to prevent a large increase in imports.’ See Grant, ‘Agriculture and economic development in Germany’, p. 180.

19 Malenbaum, Wilfred, The world wheat economy, 1885–1939, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

20 Morgan, Dan, Merchants of grain, New York: Viking Press, 1979, p. 60 Google Scholar .

21 Coclanis, Peter A., ‘Southeast Asia’s incorporation into the world rice market: a revisionist view’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 24, 2, 1993, pp. 251–267 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

22 Coclanis, Peter A., ‘Distant thunder: the creation of a world market in rice and the transformations it wrought’, American Historical Review, 98, 4, 1993, pp. 1050–1078 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Coclanis, Peter A., ‘The poetics of American agriculture: the United States rice industry in international perspective’, Agricultural History, 69, 2, 1995, pp. 140–162 Google Scholar .

23 Coclanis, ‘Distant thunder’.

24 Findlay and O’Rourke, Power and plenty.

25 Eichengreen, Barry, Globalizing capital: a history of the international monetary system, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996 Google Scholar .

26 Federico, Giovanni, Feeding the world: an economic history of agriculture, 1800–2000, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005 Google Scholar .

27 Offer, Avner, The First World War: an agrarian interpretation, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989 Google Scholar .

28 We are defining a quintal as 100 kg.

29 Bacon, Louis B. and Schloemer, Friedrich C., World trade in agricultural products, Rome: International Institute of Agriculture, 1940, pp. 40–43 Google Scholar .

30 Grando, Stefano and Volpi, Gianluca, ‘Backwardness, modernization, propaganda: agrarian policies and rural representations in the Italian Fascist regime’, in Lourenzo Fernández-Prieto, Juan Pan-Montojo, and Miguel Cabo, eds., Agriculture in the age of fascism, Turnhout: Brepols, 2014, pp. 43–84 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

31 Gesine Gerhard, ‘The modernization dilemma: agrarian policies in Nazi Germany’, in Fernández-Prieto, Pan-Montojo, and Cabo, Agriculture in the age of fascism, pp. 139–58.

32 Federico, ‘Natura non facit saltus’, p. 26.

33 Chatriot, Alain, La politique du blé: crises et régulation d’un marché dans la France de l’entre-deux-guerres, Paris: Institut de la gestion publique et du développement économique, Comité pour l’histoire économique et financière de la France, 2016 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

34 Pinilla, Vicente, Entre la inercia y el cambio: el sector agrario aragonés, 1850–1935, Madrid: Ministerio de Agricultura, 1995, pp. 319–340 Google Scholar .

35 Alan de Bromhead, Alan Fernihough, Markus Lamp, and Kevin Hjortshøj O’Rourke, ‘When Britain turned inward: protection and the shift towards empire in interwar Britain’, University of Oxford Discussion Papers in Economic and Social History, 152, 2017, https://www.nber.org/papers/w23164 (consulted 2 November 2018).

36 Taylor, Alonzo E., ‘Rye in its relation to wheat’, Wheat Studies, 4, 1928, pp. 181–234 Google Scholar .

37 Imperial Economic Committee, Grain crops: a summary of figures of production and trade relating to wheat, wheat flour, barley, oats, maize, rice, rye, London: Statistics and Intelligence Branch of the Empire Marketing Board, 1932 Google Scholar .

38 Imperial Economic Committee, Reports of the UK Imperial Economic Committee, twentieth report, the wheat situation 1931, London: Statistics and Intelligence Branch of the Empire Marketing Board, 1932, p. 35 Google Scholar .

39 A. J. H. Latham and Larry Neal, ‘The international market in rice and wheat, 1868–1914’, Economic History Review, 36, 2, 1983, pp. 260–80.

40 Timoshenko, Vladimir P., World agriculture and the depression, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, 1933, p. 122 Google Scholar .

41 de Hevesy, Paul, World wheat planning and economic planning in general, London: Oxford University Press, 1940, p. 207 Google Scholar .

42 Imperial Economic Committee, Grain crops, p. 81.

43 The Liverpool Corn Trade Association, 1853–1953, Liverpool: Liverpool Corn Trade Association, 1953, p. 42.

44 Davis, Joseph S., ‘The world wheat problem’, Wheat Studies, 8, 1932, pp. 409–444 Google Scholar .

45 Hevesy, World wheat planning.

46 Timoshenko, Vladimir P., Wheat prices and the world wheat market, New York: Cornell University, 1928 Google Scholar .

47 Davis, ‘The world wheat problem’.

48 Olmstead, Alan L. and Rhode, Paul W., Creating abundance: biological innovation and American agricultural development, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008 Google Scholar .

49 Pujol, Josep, ‘Wheat varieties and technological change in Europe, 19th and 20th centuries: new issues in economic history’, Historia Agraria, 54, 2010, pp. 71–103 Google Scholar .

50 Malenbaum, World wheat economy, pp. 128–9.

51 Hevesy, World wheat planning, pp. 41–2.

52 Davis, World wheat problem.

53 Hevesy, World wheat planning.

54 Malenbaum, World wheat economy, pp. 68–76; Schultz, Henry, The theory and measurement of demand, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1938 Google Scholar ; Holbrook Working, ‘The elasticities of demand for wheat’, Econometrica, 5, 2, 1937, pp. 185–186 Google Scholar ; Stone, Richard, The measurement of consumers’ expenditure and behaviour in the United Kingdom, 1920–1938, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954 Google Scholar .

55 Malenbaum, World wheat economy, pp. 244–5.

56 Societé des Nations, Comité Économique, La crise agricole, vol. I, Geneva: Série de Publications de la Societé des Nations, 1931, p. 28.

57 Morgan, Merchants of grain, p. 81.

58 Imperial Economic Committee, Reports of the UK Imperial Economic Committee, p. 11.

59 Imperial Economic Committee, Grain crops: a summary of figures of production and trade relating to wheat, wheat flour, barley, oats, maize, rice, rye, London: Statistics and Intelligence Branch of the Empire Marketing Board, 1939, p. 43.

60 Taylor, Alonzo E., ‘The international wheat conferences during 1930–31’, Wheat Studies, 7, 9, 1931, pp. 439–475 Google Scholar .

61 Ibid.

62 Imperial Economic Committee, Reports of the Imperial Economic Committee: maize, twenty-eighth report , London: Statistics and Intelligence Branch of the Empire Marketing Board, 1934 Google Scholar .

63 Pinilla, Vicente and Aparicio, Gema, ‘Navigating in troubled waters: South American exports of food and agricultural products, 1900–1950’, Revista de Historia Económica-Journal of Iberian and Latin American Economic History, 33, 2, 2015, pp. 223–255 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

64 Latham, and Neal, , ‘The international market in rice’.Google Scholar

65 Brandt, Loren, ‘Chinese agriculture and the international economy, 1870–1930s: a reassessment’, Explorations in Economic History, 22, 1993, pp. 168–193 CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Brandt, Loren, ‘Interwar Japanese agriculture: revisionist views on the impact of the colonial rice policy and the labor-surplus hypothesis’, Explorations in Economic History, 30, 1995, pp. 259–293 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

66 Hayami, Yuhiro, ‘Japan’s rice policy in historical perspective’, Food Research Institute Studies, 14, 4, 1975, pp. 359–380 Google Scholar .

67 Hayami, Yuhiro and Ruttan, Vernon, ‘Korean rice, Taiwan rice, and Japanese agricultural stagnation: an economic consequence of colonialism’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 84, 4, 1970, pp. 562–589 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

68 Wickizer, V. D. and Bennett, M. K., The rice economy of Monsoon Asia, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1941, p. 95 Google Scholar .

69 Loren Brandt, ‘Chinese agriculture’, p. 274.

70 Anderson, Kym and Tyers, Rod, ‘Japanese rice policy in the interwar period: some consequences of imperial self sufficiency’, Japan and the World Economy, 4, 2, 1992, pp. 103–127 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

71 Wickizer and Bennett, The rice economy, p. 97.