The Economics of the Frontier

Conquest and Settlement

Ronald Findlay, Mats Lundahl

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781137602367
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137602374
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Economics

This book deals with the economics of establishing a frontier by conquest or by peaceful settlement, the costs involved, and the optimum extension of the territory. The opening chapters discuss the most relevant literature about frontiers – conceptual, theoretical and empirical – and introduce the fundamental theoretical model for extending frontiers which is drawn on throughout the book. The authors use this theoretical apparatus by applying it to a number of historical cases. These include the division of the European territory between the Byzantine Empire, Islam and Western Europe, the creation and expansion of the Mongol Empire, the impact of the Black Death, the European discovery of the New World, the staples trade from 1870–1914, and the rise and fall of banditry in Brazil. The Economics of the Frontier brings together a collection of essays which explore how economically optimal frontiers were founded from sixth-century Europe through to twentieth-century Brazil.

Table of contents

• Dedication
• Preface
• Contents
• List of Sources
• List of Figures
• 1: Introduction: Frontiers and Empires
• 2: Frontiers and Empires in Historical Perspective
• 3: Modeling Global Interdependence: Centers, Peripheries and Frontiers
• 4: Towards a Model of Territorial Expansion and the Limits of Empire
• 5: Demographic Shocks and the Factor Proportions Model: From the Plague of Justinian to the Black Death
• 6: The First Globalization Episode: The Creation of the Mongol Empire, or the Economics of Chinggis Khan
• 7: Towards a Factor Proportions Approach to Economic History: Population, Precious Metals and Prices from the Black Death to the Price Revolution
• 8: International Trade and Factor Mobility with an Endogenous Land Frontier: Some General Equilibrium Implications of Christopher Columbus
• 9: Natural Resources, ‘Vent-for-Surplus’ and the Staples Theory
• 10: Resource-Led Growth—A Long-Term Perspective: The Relevance of the  1870–1914 Experience for Today’s Developing Economies
• 11: Lampião and the Colonels: On the Political Economy of Banditry
• Epilogue: Frontiers—Theory and History
• Index