The colonial seaports were not only the centers for overseas trade; they were also the places where

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July 25th 2022

PA.023 | Integrating the World economy: seaports and coal markets, 1850-1930s

Centre des colloques - Room 3.02

Address: Place du Front populaire, 93322 Aubervilliers cedex

Building: Centre des colloques - Campus Condorcet

Floor: 3

Room number: 3.02

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Parallel Sessions

Description

This session aims at describing and explaining the evolution of coal markets at seaports around the World from the first wave of globalization to the beginnings of the shipping transition from coal to oil. Coal markets for shipping business represented a key issue on the configuration of the globalization and the introduction of maritime regions into these processes of structural shifts. The papers presented at this session deal with the evolution of coal markets at seaports from different scopes such as: bunkering companies; comparative coal price series; labour organization; technological advances related to bunkering; transition from coal to oil; port competition; institutions, and cultural heritage related to coal activity. From an international scope and different methodological approaches, this session seeks for a holistic explanation on the driving factors of coal markets evolution in historical and transnational perspective. Building on these parameters, we aim to provide a valid explanation on the way how coal markets at seaports fostered the growth of global seaborne trade. On the other hand, this session aims to explore the way how each local market adapted to the demand of bunkering services building on institutional, economic and social approaches. Thus, case-studies (local and regional) are privileged to provide an overall analysis for a special issue on coal markets around the World. Running from sail to oil, this session would provide a long- term explanation on the specific features which pushed up (or locked) the coal markets in their respective regions. In addition, this session is especially interested on the analysis of peripheral markets located at the Global South which reinforced the configuration of World economic systems. In short, we set up a number of research questions for this session: How coal markets operated at the local-regional level? What have been the key driving factors of coal market evolution in the long run? How coal prices evolved at seaports around the World and more broadly throughout the Global South during the analyzed period? How labour (stevedoring) adapted to technological changes? How the two major transitions (sail-steam and steam-oil) worked? Some answers to these questions would come from: Exploring statistical series for each seaport: import, bunkering, coal prices, coal handling by hour, and bunkering performance. Studying entrepreneurial and institutional issues: investments, management, and technological adaptation.

Thematics

E3 - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles

F - International Economics

F23 - Multinational Firms • International Business

L - Industrial Organization

L91 - Transportation: General

N - Economic History

N7 - Transport, Trade, Energy, Technology, and Other Services

P - Economic Systems

P28 - Natural Resources • Energy • Environment

Organizer(s)

Castillo Hidalgo Daniel

Papers

From the Baltic to Colonial Africa. Worms, Mory and the Others. Markets and Coal Companies for the French Navy in France, 1848-1939

Jean François Grevet - Université de Lille - Institut National du Professorat et de l´Éducation

This communication focuses on the oligopolistic structures and actors of coal and oil bunkering for the whole French naval sector building on archival sources and commercial courts files. This paper aims to fill the existing gap on the knowledge of those companies composed by shipbrokers, freight forwarders and coaling-oil companies at ports. Some of those companies such as Mory (1804) or Worms (1848) became large-scale companies operating on a global scale. These companies firstly operated on the North-West French façade (from Rouen to Dunkirk) moving to overseas markets. They managed British coal imports of Metropolitan France as well as the coal handled at the Suez Canal and in a number of seaports through the French colonial empire. Then, the companies participated in the transition to liquid fuels during the 1920 decade, adopting a remarkable entrepreneurial expansion strategy around the overseas Empire.

French capital, Gdynia, and the position of Polish coal on international markets in the interwar period

Jerzy Lazor - Warsaw School of Economics

After World War One newly Polish coal deposits, which had previously formed part of imperial Russian and German markets, now found their way to overseas European buyers and beyond. The goal of my paper, first, is to quantify this process by looking at the changing geographical distribution of Polish exports, as well as the pattern of prices on different markets. Second, I aim to explore the connection between the growing role of maritime coal exports and French investment in Poland, which allowed the creation of a port in Gdynia, and the railroad linking it to Silesia. I will place these investments, together with the entrance of French capital into coal companies in Poland, in a wider context of French security policy. Third, I will investigate the role of coal companies with foreign (especially French) capital in Polish exports, and their interactions with the foreign exchange-starved government in Warsaw, aiming to determine whether these connections had an impact on the aforementioned pattern of prices of Polish coal.

British coal and bunkering. Strategies of integration and interrelation of producers, distributors and ship lines, 1850-1936

Luis G. Cabrera Armas - University of La Laguna

The development of steam navigation was central to the growth of world trade from 1850 onwards. This would not have been possible without the existence of coaling stations on the main sea routes for the supply of ships. The demand for supply stations along the great ocean routes was a demand of the national navies, particularly the Royal Navy, and gradually of the shipping companies since the second half of the nineteenth century. However, many of the port enclaves lacked coal, or were not of adequate quality, so coal needs had to be met by imports. Great Britain, especially Wales, became the main supplier of coal for shipping and domestic industries over large areas of the world. The business opportunity encouraged local entrepreneurs to expand their business activities into bunkering. However, business strategies changed as steamship traffic intensified and competition between coal producers increased to release their growing supply. European mining, coal distribution and transport companies, especially British, in order to reduce their transaction costs, established coaling stations on every important shipping trade route throughout the world. This communication analyzes the business strategies of integration and interrelation of producers, distributors, and ship lines, to obtain, or ensure, a greater share in the supply of coal. Among others, Cambrian Coal Combine (Consolidated Cambrian, Ltd.), L. Gueret, Ltd.; Lysberg, Ltd.; Cory Bros. & Co. (Ltd.); Willard, Sutherland & Co.; Ocean Coal Co.; Wilson, Sons & Co.; Hull Blyth & Co.; Elder Dempster & Co.; Deusche Kolen Depot.

Bunkering in West Africa: The Case of Dakar, 1850-1930s

Daniel Castillo Hidalgo - University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria

Bunkering fostered port activity among a small group of major seaports in Africa. This paper investigates the evolution of coal markets in Dakar during the first stage of Globalization that also coincided with the building of the Colonial State. The main goal of this paper is to provide an overall examination of the long-term evolution of coal market in the Senegalese port, regarding to its growing influence for the whole colonial economic structure. This paper builds on the analysis of quantitative data (coal handled, price series) and qualitative sources on entrepreneurial strategies. This paper also examines the Great War conjuncture and the inter-Allied cooperative strategies for the provision of coal for Allied vessels. Last, this research also focuses the beginning of the transition towards liquid fuel and structural changes involving port infrastructures. Main primary sources used in this paper have been collected from the National Archives of Senegal (Dakar) as well as from the French Overseas Archives (Aix-en-Provence).

Cartelized competition in the bunker coal market: The Ruhr Coal Syndicate and the Deutsche Kohlendepot, 1901-1914

Eva-Maria Roelenvink - Johannes Gutenberg - University of Mainz

The German markets for hard coal have been increasingly organised since 1893. This was due to the establishment of the Rhenish-Westphalian Coal Syndicate in the largest German coal-mining district on the Rhine and Ruhr. The Coal-Syndicate became a market giant because it soon began not only to cartelise the price and the production quota for the members involved, but also to form a sales organisation that was increasingly taking hold. The Coal-Syndicate focused primarily on markets that were considered to be so-called competitive markets. It was mainly British coal that the Coal-Syndicate wanted to push back, not only on the German coal markets but also far beyond. The bunker coal business was an important lever here to counter British coal on the world market. Deutsche-Kohlendepot GmbH (DKD) had already been founded in Hamburg in 1901 by the major overseas shipping companies. DKD initially operated its business exclusively with British coal. This was over when the syndicate and DKD signed a contract in 1905. The DKD was bound by the strict rules of the Syndicate, and the DKD was no longer allowed to trade in British coal. The presentation deals with the question of the organisation of the bunker coal business. Because between the founders of the DKD and the Coal Syndicate a typical principal-agent problem has arisen. Even though the bunker coal business via Hamburg assumed rather small dimensions compared to the large markets for the iron and steel industry and domestic fuel, the expansion was an important aspect of the Coal-Syndicate's sales strategy.

Ports, coal and exports in the Argentinean Pampas region. An evaluation of the institutional actors linked to the circulation of coal during the export-export period (1860-1930).

Santiago Prieto - CONICET - Nodo Rosario

Miguel Ángel De Marco - CONICET - Nodo Rosario

This paper proposes an approach to the relationship between the coal business and the Argentine maritime and river ports, a subject that has not been addressed in the regional historiography, and which contributes to the understanding of the dynamics of reception, circulation and supply of coal as a predominant energy source for the exports of the Pampean region during the agro-export period (1860-1930). We hope to arrive at an initial general characterisation of the impact of the coal economy on the history of Argentine ports, understanding its local, regional and global links, from an interdisciplinary perspective, bringing together different thematic and disciplinary perspectives. This approach is constituted with different approaches, proposing a journey from the general to the particular. In this sense, we present an overview of the Argentinean ports identified as receivers and depositories of coal from records that account for global networks. Next, given that Argentina's insertion into the international division of labour as an agro-exporting nation implied diverse strategies of local and foreign agents to control the sources of energy that sustained the new regime of production and circulation of goods, we will observe the logistical and communications revolution brought about by the introduction of the railway into the national territory and its link with the articulation of the ports and their agro-exporting hinterlands. Once this general panorama has been outlined, we will deal with three cases that question the complexity and diversity of the issues that lead to the purpose we have set out, and which allow us to identify significant aspects of the coal circuit: the port facilities as an artefact of reception and distribution (port of La Plata); the conflictive instances that alter the dynamics by exposing political, institutional, labour, economic and social actors (in the port cities of Santa Fe and Rosario); and the dissemination of the product in "a coal culture" through artistic representations and in the popular language of the great port metropolis of Buenos Aires, known as lunfardo. The artist Quinquela Martín, who was also a dock worker linked to the charcoal trade, is an emblematic case of the visual representations of port life in the neighbourhood of La Boca. In the same way, the word carbonero and its derivations are explored in order to explore the scope and significance of this activity in the complexity of the port sociability.

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