Over the last two centuries trade has grown remarkably, completely transforming the global economy. Today about one fourth of total global production is exported. Understanding this transformative process is important because trade has generated gains, but it has also had important distributional consequences._x000D_
From a historical perspective, there have been two waves of globalization. The first wave started in the 19th century, and came to an end with the beginning of the First World War. Trade transactions include both goods (tangible products that are physically shipped) and services (intangible commodities, such as tourism and financial services)._x000D_
This paper analyzes the spatial organization of the world’s railway network up to 1920 through, mainly, the methodological application of cartography and theought geomatics, the graph theory. For this, the recreation od the railroad from different historical cartography and measures of connectivity, accessibility and centrality are used. The study is complemented with the integration of nodes outside the graph and the correlation of the train network and socioeconomic development._x000D_

Barbara Polo Martín
Université Paris Nanterre

 
ID Abstract: 603