Elsevier

Journal of Historical Geography

Volume 62, October 2018, Pages 51-70
Journal of Historical Geography

Transportation and regional inequality: the impact of railways in the Nordic countries, 1860–1960

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2018.05.001Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Transportation played a key role in Nordic industrialisation.

  • Industrialisation reduced regional inequalities in GDP per capita.

  • Railways fuelled a process of rural-based industrialisation.

  • Population growth was greater in initially sparsely populated regions.

  • Railways helped shape the economic landscape of the entire Nordic region.

Abstract

Before industrialisation the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden) were part of Europe's poor periphery, but over the last century these countries have become some of the richest in the world. This article analyses the origins of Nordic growth from the late nineteenth century, focusing on a previously neglected topic: the role of transportation. We argue that transportation, and most notably large investments in railways, played a key role in Nordic industrialisation. Railways made the exploitation and exportation of natural resources possible in what had previously been isolated areas and helped fuel a process of rural-based industrialisation. By creating conditions that favoured migration towards previously scarcely populated, but economically booming areas, Nordic industrialisation was paralleled by a reduction in regional inequality as measured in per capita GDP. We assert that railways were built before local population growth and helped shape the economic landscape of the entire region. We illustrate these points using maps based on Historical Geographic Information Systems (HGIS) highlighting railways, regional GDP and population densities from the mid nineteenth century until 1960.

Section snippets

The importance of transportation for catching up in economic growth

Before industrialisation, the Nordic countries were relatively poor and isolated. They stood on the periphery of Europe. The region's population was predominantly rural and towns were small, since the constraints of land and transportation limited the carrying capacity of their hinterlands. By the late nineteenth century, rapid population growth in the region had resulted in a large landless rural underclass and some areas were probably at their Malthusian limits in terms of population density.

Economic growth and regional inequality

In 1965 Jeffrey Williamson formulated his famous hypothesis about long term regional inequality. Considering a large dataset of regional income per capita between 1920 and 1960, he found a peak in inequality in the middle of this period of economic growth. This suggested a pattern of rising levels of regional inequality until a certain turning point, after which inequality would start to decrease, giving the shape of an upside down letter U. He argued that some regions appear as early

The investment in Nordic railways

The nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were the formative years in terms of the creation of the modern Nordic states. Investment in railways became part of a strategy of these states to promote their nations' interests in economic development, military security and political unification. Despite political differences all Nordic countries were largely autonomous and able to make their own decisions about the scope and shape of important national infrastructure investments.38

Turbulence in population distribution

We assert that railways were built before local population growth and helped shape the economic landscape of the entire Nordic region. The counterargument is that railways were merely a response to existing economic conditions. For such a counterargument to hold we would expect the first railway lines to connect the urban agglomerations that were largest in 1880. Thereafter, forces favouring agglomeration would have worked to sustain the growth of already prosperous municipalities, leaving the

Conclusions

Within a period of a hundred years between 1860 and 1960, the Nordic region changed from being part of Europe's poor periphery to becoming one of the world's most prosperous economies. Its take-off occurred in the late nineteenth century and has often been attributed to export-demand from the growing British economy; although domestic market forces, fuelled by imports, were probably also important. However, neither export- nor import-driven growth could have been sustained without major

Acknowledgements

We are thankful to participants in the Studying GDP Regional Imbalances for a Better Long-term Analysis of European lntegration seminar for their useful comments and suggestions. We are also thankful to the three anonymous referees and to the editor Miles Ogborn for valuable comments on how to improve the manuscript. Enflo acknowledges financial support from Knut and Alice Wallenberg's Foundation (KAW2014.0138). This research has also been financed by the Spanish Ministry for the Economy and

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