3.1b) Transport and trade in the 19th and 20th centuries:

Question 1

1) What is the feedback loop of transport and trade?

Answer 1

1) Improvements in transport technologies have helped to grow the geographical scale of trade. Such capitalist companies always want to increase profits, so they invest in transport technology.

Question 2

1a) In the 1900s, which manufacturing companies benefited from improved transportation?
1b) How does connectivity create a spatial division of labour?

Answer 2

1a) Ford and General Motors.
1b) It allows for multiple sites of production, which reduce transport costs and allow companies to take advantage of cheap sites of production.

Question 3

1a) How were railways an important innovation in transport?

1b) What is the purpose of HS2?

Answer 3

1a) Railways expanded globally in the 1800s. By 1904, the 9000 km Trans-Siberian Railway connected Moscow to China and Japan.
1b) It will halve journey times between London and Northern England.

Question 4

1) How was steam power an important innovation in transport?

Answer 4

1) It allowed Britain to become the leading world power in the 1800s. Ships and trains could transport goods and armies into Asia and Africa.

Question 5

1) How are jet aircraft an important innovation in transport?

Answer 5

1) Introducing the Boeing 747 in the 1960s, made international travel commonplace. Expansions in the cheap flight sector, have brought it to the masses in HICs.

Question 6

1a) How is container shipping an important innovation in transport?
1b) How big is the Chinese vessel Cosco?

Answer 6

1a) 200 million individual container movements happen each year. Shipping has been the backbone of the global economy since the 1950s.
1b) 366 m long, 48 m wide and can carry 13,000 containers.