ABSTRACT
The task of charting the growth and changing nature of world trade during the period 1820 to 1913 has been helped enormously by Professor Kuznets’ pioneering work in assembling and analysing the available statistical material, and the following discussion of foreign trade developments in the nineteenth century owes much to his latest work in the field.1 The discussion itself will be limited to a consideration of commodity trade, since long-term data on the international flows of services (freight earnings, insurance and banking, tourism, etc) are scarce. An analysis of the available services data suggests, however, that earnings on services tend to rise proportionately to commodity trade. Moreover, the average proportion of services to commodity trade is, for all but the smallest of countries, limited to between a tenth and one-sixth. Even so, it should be kept in mind that, for some countries, for example Britain, services income played an important part in covering deficits on commodity trade, and that for others an export surplus on commodity trade could quickly disappear once payments for services are taken into account.
