ABSTRACT
One of the major characteristics of the industrial revolution was the substitution of inanimate sources of energy and materials for the products of farming and forestry as the basis for manufacturing. Although in conventional national income accountancy terms fuels and minerals provide only a small part of the GNP of the major industrial powers, these economies could not now function without them. In the literature both of geography and of economic history it is widely recognized that natural resources can provide the starting point for development. Geographers and regional scientists refer to the ‘export base’; economic historians describe a similar process as the ‘staple theory’ of development. In North’s formulation, the impulse for development in a region arises from external demand for one or more locally produced goods. These may be agricultural in origin, forestry products or minerals, though North himself clearly was thinking of agricultural products in particular.
