Studies In The Economic History Of The Pacific Rim

This book offers a broad historical critique of the popular notion of a "Pacific region." Analyzing the long-term, historical development of the major economies around the Pacific Rim in language aimed at the general reader, the authors throw light on the most important relationships in the region today as well as on the prospects for the future.

This book provides an overview of five centuries of Pacific and Pacific Rim economic and trade history, making it a valuable contribution to understanding of the increasing global importance of this region.

This title was first published in 2002.In recent years scholars have begun to conceptualize the history of the Pacific Ocean as a subset of world history. This question is taken up in the introductory chapter of this volume, which sets out four periods of modern Pacific history: a silver period, 1570s-1750; a period of early integration, 1750-1850; a gold period, 1850-c.1900; and a period of imperial strategies after the gold rushes. The next chapter looks at the fur trade of the Pacific coast of America, and its dependence on markets in China and Russia, followed by a set which focus on the era of the gold rushes, in California, Australia and New Zealand, when the pace of Pacific integration grew rapidly and new markets opened across the ocean. The last chapters examine aspects of the subsequent evolution of the Pacific Ocean into an ’American lake’, looking in particular at the interlocking of politics and migration. This volume carries forward study of the ’Pacific Centuries’, promoting the conceptualization of the Pacific Ocean as a coherent unit of analysis, and providing further important steps toward provision of the multi-century framework that is required for proper understanding of today’s ’Pacific Century’.

"A survey of the economy of the Pacific Rim region"--

Analyzing the economic, strategic, and cultural elements that shape the attraction--and the friction--between the Pacific and Atlantic communities, this book integrates European perspectives into a discussion that has traditionally been dominated by Asian and U.S. voices. The authors take as their theme the uncertainty created by the Pacific Rim's new role in shifting the international balances of political and economic power. Economic uncertainty has been fueled by Asia's trade surpluses with Western Europe and the United States, with the West viewing its system of free world trade as working to the greater advantage of the Asia Pacific. Strategic uncertainty pivots on the U.S.-USSR superpower rivalry and on the growing influence of Japan and the PRC on the strategic balance in the Pacific Basin. A more subtle and powerful constraint surfaces in the realm of culture--in differing perceptions among the people of the Asia Pacific and the West concerning liberal values and the liberal underpinnings of the present system of world trade.

Trade across the Pacific will be one of the dominant forces in the economy of the next century. This collection reflects the birth of Pacific Rim history, until recently largely neglected. It addresses the development of the Pacific Rim over four centuries, combining broad historical syntheses with a range of essays on specific topics, from trade with Hong Kong to British overseas banking. It will form a major contribution to this rapidly expanding new field.