Great Depression

Endowment

World War II

Archaeology

Economics

First world war

World trade

International trade

Polity

Politics

Geography

Political science

Ancient history

History

Revista de Historia Económica / Journal of Iberian and Latin American Economic History

This paper outlines the development of world trade from 1800 to 1938. It relies on a newly compiled database, which, unlike previous works (e.g. Lewis 1981), reports series of imports and exports at current and constant prices and at current and constant (1913) borders for almost all existing polities. In the first sections, we outline the estimation methodology and assess the reliability of the series (now available at http://www.uc3m.es/tradehist_db ). World trade grew very fast throughout the «long» 19 th century, but growth rates were higher before 1870. We measure the effects of war and the Great Depression on total trade and trade by continent and polity. Within this general upward trend, the performance of polities differed by geographical location, level of development, political status and factor endowment. Finally, we estimate trends in the share of primary products, which declined until World War One, with an acceleration in the second half of the 19 th century.

WORLD TRADE, 1800-1938: A NEW SYNTHESIS