Trade, protection, and development in the interwar empires – TPADIE

The project will explore the relationships between trade, trade policies, other government policies, and economic development in the interwar French, Dutch, and Japanese empires. It will also study the nature and implications of changing trade policy in China at this time, as an example of an underdeveloped country which, while formally independent, faced severe outside constraints on its ability to choose its own trade policy before it regained tariff autonomy in 1929.

There will be two main components to the research.

The first will explore the implications of trade policy (tariffs, quotas, and other non-tariff barriers to trade) on the level and composition of imports in China, the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), France, Japan, and the Netherlands. Using detailed data on imports, disaggregated by commodity and source, we will estimate trade elasticities, embody these in quantitative models of import demand, and perform counterfactual simulations allowing us to see whether and to what extent (a) protection depressed imports during the 1930s, and (b) trade discrimination contributed to the fragmentation of the global economy into imperial trade blocs.

The second will look at the impact of trade and other government policies on trade and socio-economic development in French Indochina and North Africa. It will study the implications for Indochina’s exports and imports of trade and other government policies, exploring the spatial impact of these policies and placing them in a comparative perspective. It will also look at the relationship between trade shocks, state-building, and political instability in Tunisia.