Economic geography and economic history

The world is an unequal place. The origins of this inequality can be traced back (at least) to the beginnings of industrialization in the nineteenth century. Industrialization – i.e., technological development – did not take place at the same rate and at the same time in every country, and neither did it in all the regions of the same country. In the course of this chapter, we show how the new economic geography (NEG) literature makes it possible to identify a number of elements that are essential for understanding this reality. This line of research provides an economic foundation for the existence of a relationship between the economic development processes and the advance of production sectors characterized by the presence of economies of scale (i.e., manufacturing), market integration, and the genesis of an unequal distribution of economic activity across the territory. The NEG literature thus considers that the inequality that today characterizes the most developed economies has its roots in the early stages of their economic development processes, brought about almost 200 years ago by the technological change typical of the first and second Industrial Revolutions and the integration of the national markets. In other words, we show how the connection between economic history and economic geography contributes not only to a better understanding of the geography of the historical industrialization processes but also to the identification of the elements that explain the current unequal economic geography of the world.