8 - Asian Cities in the Global Maritime Network since the Late Nineteenth Century
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 December 2020
Summary
This work is dedicated to the memory of Prof. W. Rhoads Murphey III
Abstract
Based on an untapped data source providing information on global movements of merchant vessels, this research maps for the first time the level and nature of port traffic among Asian port cities every forty years or so since the year 1890. The main results, which reveal major internal differentiations within Asia, and their evolutions, are discussed in the light of geographical research about Asian ports published since the 1950s, providing many case studies. While West Asia exhibits certain prominence in the late nineteenth century, due to the concentration of steamer vessels, East Asia attracts the most productivity from 1925 onwards, backed by the rapid growth of Japan and, since the early 1960s, the Asian Tigers. Such dynamics have produced a decreasing concentration of port activity, with the Asian port system evolving towards a more even distribution. Although such a large-scale analysis cannot describe in detail each port city, it serves as a useful benchmark for identifying change, resilience, and path-dependency within one of the world's largest trading areas from colonial times to the present.
Introduction
One of the most striking features of contemporary Asia is the dominant concentration of population and economic activities along its shores, with a limited inland penetration of hinterlands (Arasaratnam 1992: 367-372). Many scholars have already acknowledged the importance of port activities throughout Asian history (Murphey 1989: 223-245), Asian cities being best understood in their form and function as ‘brides of the sea’. Despite many physical difficulties inherent to rapid urban and port growth, maritime networks remain more than ever essential to the development of Asian cities and their host nations. Port traffic has long been closely tied to its adjacent urban economies although like in other regions, Asian port cities have developed a preference for other, more lucrative transport functions such as airlines (Okuno 2000: 426-439) and value-added logistics (Cheung et al. 2003: 245-253; Wang and Cheng 2010: 104-115). Nevertheless, certain aspects such as urban morphology have remained rather stable over time, as in the case of main Indian cities (Kosambi and Brush 1988: 32-47).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Asian CitiesColonial to Global, pp. 173 - 186Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2015