Skip to main content
Publications | Persons | Institutes | Projects
[ report an error in this record ]basket (0): add | show Print this page

Opening to the East: shipping between Europe and Asia, 1770-1830
Solar, P.M. (2013). Opening to the East: shipping between Europe and Asia, 1770-1830. Journal of Economic History 73(3): 625-661. https://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0022050713000569
In: Journal of Economic History. CAMBRIDGE UNIV PRESS: New York. ISSN 0022-0507; e-ISSN 1471-6372, more
Peer reviewed article  

Available in  Author 

Keyword
    Marine/Coastal

Author  Top 

Abstract
    Shipping costs between Europe and Asia were reduced by two-thirds between the 1770s and the 1820s. Copper sheathing and other technical improvements which allowed ships to make more frequent voyages over longer lifetimes accounted for part of the cost reduction. British hegemony in the Indian Ocean, which ended an eighteenth-century arms race, accounted for the rest by allowing the substitution of smaller ships which cost less to build and required fewer men per ton. These changes were at least as important as the elimination of monopoly profits in narrowing intercontinental price differentials during the early nineteenth century.

All data in the Integrated Marine Information System (IMIS) is subject to the VLIZ privacy policy Top | Author