Many economic history papers dealing with trade globalization in the long term have been produced for about 40 years (Bairoch (1974), Norheim-Anderson (1993), Chase Dunn et al. (2000), Findlay-O’Rourke (2006), Head (2015), World Trade Atlas (2015)).
Our session will be mainly based on new large historical databases dealing with international Trade are being developed: The RiCardo and the Montesquieu databases.
The RICardo project was initiated at Sciences Po (France) in 2004 with the aim of creating a large dataset of historical bilateral trade statistics available to the research community from 1792 to 1938.
The Montesquieu Databasis was intiated at Bordeaux University in 2010 in order to create a dataset of bilateral trade flows at a very disaggregated level (SITC 3 and 5) from 1836 to 1938.
In these databases, variables are more numerous (Trade flows, geographical information, diversity and quality of the products…): does it bring something new from a scientific point of view? What does the recent development of large databases bring to this work? To what extent, more extensive data enable to reconsider the process of globalization and the process of specialization? Does this kind of databases allow to reconsider trade policy and its implications? Can we bring out a new way to present and understand trade globalization in the long term through network analysis?