Export Economies
Factories and cities created a demand
- The need for raw materials for factories and increased food supplies for the growing population in urban centres led to the growth of export economies around the world.
- Two demands, both created by unit 5: mills need fibre and metal, and cities need food.
- So the shape of the nineteenth-century world economy is set by what industrial societies consume.
Select all the demands the CED says drove export economies.
Both demands were created by industrialisation in unit 5.
Specialised in extraction and crops
- Those export economies specialised in commercial extraction of natural resources and the production of food and industrial crops.
- The CED's examples: cotton in Egypt, rubber in the Amazon and the Congo basin, palm oil in West Africa, guano in Peru and Chile, meat from Argentina and Uruguay, diamonds from Africa.
- Specialised is the key word — a region organised around one export is exposed to that export's price.
Select all the export economies the CED names.
British steel is manufacturing, not an export economy in this sense.
Raw materials out, finished goods in
- The profits from these raw materials were used to purchase finished goods.
- That single clause describes the whole exchange, and it explains why export economies did not become industrial ones.
- Selling raw and buying finished keeps the value added — and the factories — somewhere else.
Which demand, and what environment?
Sort each export by the demand it met.
The profits from raw materials were used to purchase ____ goods.
Selling raw and buying finished keeps the value added somewhere else.
Specialisation is the risk, not just the strategy. A region organised around one export is exposed to that export's price and to a substitute appearing elsewhere — and the CED's clause about profits buying finished goods explains why the value added stayed abroad.
A region could simply choose which export economy to become.
The map of the export economy is partly a map of climate and geology.
Environment set what a region could sell
- The objective is how environmental factors contributed to the development of the global economy.
- Rubber needs a particular forest; guano needs particular seabird islands; cattle need particular grassland.
- So the map of the export economy is partly a map of climate and geology — which is why no state could simply choose its role.
Put the three-sentence export answer in order.
Three sentences cover the objective; the fourth earns the analysis.
Using a named example well
- Choose one export, name the environment that made it possible, and name what was bought with the proceeds.
- Guano is the cleanest: seabird islands, fertiliser for European farms, and manufactured imports in return.
- Three sentences, and the whole objective is covered.
Peru sells guano to European farmers, who use it to raise wheat yields, and buys manufactured goods with the proceeds. The arrangement works exactly as long as no cheaper fertiliser exists. When one does, the islands are still there and the economy built on them is not.
The need for factory raw materials and urban food supplies grew export economies that specialised in commercial extraction and food and industrial crops — cotton in Egypt, rubber in the Amazon and Congo, palm oil in West Africa, guano in Peru and Chile, meat from Argentina and Uruguay, African diamonds. Profits bought finished goods, which kept the value added abroad.