Global Economy and Port Morphology in Belawan, Indonesia

Abstract

Ports are crucial links in global economic exchange. Structural modifications in the global economy have necessitated sequential morphological transformations in third-world port landscapes to accommodate each new emphasis of production in hinterlands. A four-stage temporal and descriptive model is proposed to examine relationships between structural evolution of the global economy and port-landscape changes at Belawan, the busiest international outerisland port of Indonesia. AS nodes linking land and maritime transportation, and as points of interdependent economic articulation between the Western core and non-Western periphery, third-world port facilities develop and operate in a manner that reflects the long-term structural evolution of the global economy. Colonially induced, sequential structural changes in investment, production, division of labor, and trade have come in response to the progressive economic maturation of industrial countries (Wallerstein 1979). Each stage has been accompanied by innovations in transportation that allow for reduced costs, the subsequent spread of capitalist production, and the incorporation of peripheral regions into a single production system (Mandel 1978, 50-51). This article interprets the long-term evolution of port morphology as a landscape expression of global economic relationships. The premise is that each stage in the penetration by Western economic interests and accompanying transportation technologies into peripheral resource regions engenders parallel changes in the morphologies of third-world port landscapes. With the implicit assumption that economic growth in the core depended on materials and markets of the periphery and that economic growth there required capital investment from the core (King 1990, 45), the morphology of Western ports was reproduced in the third world to promote the efficient articulation of global transportation. Interpreting and understanding the continuum of port-landscape evolution at one node of the global transportation system are possible only with reference to the production system of which that port constitutes one element. The port of Belawan on the Indonesian island of Sumatra provides an instructive case study. Belawan functions as the primary outport for the most productive plantation region in the country (Fig. 1). From inauspicious beginnings in the mid-nineteenth century, northern Sumatra by the early 1900s became known as the East Coast Plantation District. More importantly, West* DR. AIRRIESS is an assistant professor of geography at Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana 47306-0470. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.149 on Wed, 28 Sep 2016 05:07:20 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW FIG. 1-Regional setting of Belawan. ern control, Western demand, and intimate industrial linkages with the West have characterized the history of plantation development. As a result, no regional economy in outer-island Indonesia is as externally oriented as that of northern Sumatra. 184 This content downloaded from 207.46.13.149 on Wed, 28 Sep 2016 05:07:20 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms