Trade Monopoly Research Articles

Geneva and the I.T.O.

the Palais des Nations at Geneva, Switzerland, representatives of seventeen nations are drafting an international trade and preparing an agenda for a world trade conference. Concurrently these same countries are negotiating multilateral tariff agreements one with the other. Officially, these Geneva talks are styled Second Session of the Preparatory Committee of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Employment. The first session of this committee was held in London in October, 1946. Framework of this London meeting was a charter prepared by the United States in anticipation of a world trade conference. This draft was an extension and clarification of proposals first published in December, 1945, and initialled by both Great Britain and the United States at the time agreement was reached on the terms of the U.S.-U.K. loan of $3,750,000,000. The Geneva talks got under way early in April. Nations represented on the committee were: Australia, Belgium-Luxembourg, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, France, India, Lebanon, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Union of South Africa, United States of America, United Kingdom. Russia is a member of the committee, but so far has not participated even in an observer capacity. The official explanation of Soviet non-appearance was described initially thus: U.S.S.R. felt unable to participate in the work of the committee at this stage as it had not at that time found it possible to devote sufficient preliminary study to the serious and far-reaching questions which were the subject of the committee's discussions. More recently the distinguished Russian economist, Emil Varga, explained Russia's absence from Geneva with the assertion that the problems discussed there have no direct interest for us in view of the state monopoly of foreign trade which is the firm element of our economic system. Mr. Varga termed the conference merely an opportunity for the

Soviet Foreign Trade. A. M. BaykovRussian-American Trade: A Study of the Soviet Foreign Trade Monopoly. M. V. Condoide

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsSoviet Foreign Trade. A. M. Baykov Russian-American Trade: A Study of the Soviet Foreign Trade Monopoly. M. V. Condoide Joseph D. CoppockJoseph D. Coppock Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Journal of Political Economy Volume 55, Number 4Aug., 1947 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/256546 Views: 1Total views on this site Copyright 1947 The University of Chicago PressPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

The Discovery of Gold at Nome, Alaska

THE AVERAGE educated American associates the discovery of gold in Alaska with the days of '98, Dawson City, and the Klondike. He is surprised to learn that gold was discovered before 1898, that Dawson City is not in Alaska, and that the Klondike is not a river within the territory of the United States. Gold was discovered in Alaska long before 1898. Even before the United States acquired Alaska in 1867, the Russians had found gold, but they discouraged any systematic search lest their fur trade suffer.' In Canadian territory adjoining Alaska, gold had been found on the Fraser River in 1858, and on the upper waters of the Stikine in 1861. During the next two decades miners prospected many of the numerous creeks of southern Alaska. From this prospecting came two significant developments, which led directly to the stampedes up to Dawson City and Nome. In 1880 Joe Juneau and Dick Harris discovered rich deposits in SilVer Bow Basin, and thereby initiated in 1881 the first gold rush in Alaska. The second event was the opening of the Dyea-Chilkoot Pass to American prospectors. In 1879 a party of twenty prospectors had attempted to cross the Chilkoot Pass but had been prevented from ascending the trail by the Indians, who feared that their monopoly of the Yukon fur trade might be destroyed if the passes were opened to American gold hunters. With the aid of Captain L. A. Beardslee, commander of the S.S. Jamestown, and with the codperation of a naval lieutenant who dramatically explained the workings of a Gatling gun to the natives, the prospectors were successful. On May 29, 1880, the Dyea-Chilkoot gate was opened to white men for the first time. Thereafter a few hardy prospectors crossed the pass each year, explored

Decay of the Trade Monopoly at Treaty Ports at the Close of the Tokugawa Regime.

Decay of the Trade Monopoly at Treaty Ports at the Close of the Tokugawa Regime.

Netherlands India and Japan

THE DUTCH and the Japanese have had long if not always the most honorable relations with each other. The Dutch arrived in Japan some sixty years after the Spanish and the Portuguese, but from then until the present they have maintained continuous relations with that country. The Japanese came to the East Indies at about the same time that the Dutch arrived there. The East India Company used the Japanese in various employments, but chiefly as soldiers. If Japan had not gone into seclusion the Japanese colony in the East Indies might have become important, but cut off from fresh accessions the Japanese group became absorbed in the general population. Throughout more than two centuries of Japanese seclusion, Japan allowed the Dutch alone of all the Western peoples to continue diplomatic and trade relations, though in a restricted form. The Dutch post on the island of Deshima in the harbor of Nagasaki was in effect a combination of a diplomatic post and trading company agency. When the Dutch Government took over the East Indian Company at the end of the i8th Century it succeeded to the trade monopoly of the Company, which was apparently of no great value, as the amount of trade was not great.' During the few years of French control over the Netherlands in the Napoleonic period Deshima was the only place in the world where the Dutch flag continued to fly. While the post at Deshima was to the Dutch only a trading agency and an unusual sort of diplomatic post, it was to Japan an aperture through which it obtained a surprising amount of information and even learning from the outside world. From the Dutch on Deshima the Japanese learned a great deal about cartography,

The Instructions of the East India Company to Lord Macartney on His Embassy to China and His Reports to the Company, 1792–4. Part I: Instructions from the Company

From 1600 until 1833 the East India Company held a monopoly of all British trade with China. Private individuals, licensed by the Company to reside and trade in India, were permitted to carry on the so-called “Country” trade between India and China, and the commanders and officers of the Company's ships were permitted to carry on “Private” trade in minor articles and to a limited extent in tea and raw silk directly between England and China. With these exceptions British trade was a closed monopoly, but despite this favourable situation the Company found much to complain of because the Chinese had their own ideas of monopoly and of how foreign trade should be carried on.

Excavations in North Syria

AT the Friday evening discourse at the Royal Institution on January 21, Sir Leonard Woolley described “Excavations in North Syria”. The object of the North Syrian Expedition has been to trace such relations as may have existed between Asia and the early Greek world, especially during and before the rise of the Cretan civilization. Two sites were chosen on the trade-route afforded by the Orontes valley. One was at al Mina, at the river mouth, one at Atchana in the Amk plain where the road debouches from the mountain range and runs across open country past Aleppo to Carchemish and the Mesopotamian centres. At al Mina, underlying the ruins of the crusading port of St. Simeon, there were found nine further strata giving a continuous record of commercial activity from 300 B.C. back to the beginning of the eighth century. During the fifth and fourth centuries Athens, in spite of the long-drawn crisis of the Persian wars, enjoyed a trade monopoly with Persia. In the sixth century B.C. the bulk of the trade was in the hands of the Rhodian manufacturers, but Corinth, Naukratis and Lesbos secured a certain amount of it and Cyprus was still selling goods in Asia although in greatly reduced measure. In the seventh century, judging by al Mina, Cyprus entirely controlled the market ; of all the imported pottery found there scarcely a sherd is not Cypriote. This domination had come about quite suddenly. It was a natural result of the wealth of the Asiatic clientele that the al Mina merchants imported always the best wares that were to be obtained ; from each manufacturing centre the finest quality was selected and the centre changed according as its level of production rose or fell.

The Critical Period of British Columbia History, 1866-1871

boundary by the Oregon Treaty of 1846. They were Vancouver Island and British Columbia. Vancouver Island, which dates from the year of the great California gold rush, was a child of the Hudson's Bay Company, merely an adjunct to the fur trading monopoly. Terms of settlement so severe as to discourage immigration were laid down by the Hudson's Bay Company.! The one independent settler, Captain W. Colquohoun Grant, was for a time employed by the company as surveyor. A royal governor, Richard Blanshard, whoserule lasted from March, 1850, to September, i851, was a pathetic figure, a governor without a colony. The real ruler was Chief Factor James Douglas of the Hudson's Bay Company, who after the departure of Blanshard became the de jure as well as de facto governor. He ruled by means of an appointed council chiefly made up of officers and ex-officers of the company. In 1856 a legislative assembly was set up but it had little power. At least five of the seven members had been or actually were in the company's employ. The gold rush to Fraser River in the spring of 1858 led to the establishment of a new colony on the mainland. This was British Columbia, so named by Her Majesty Queen Victoria. James Douglas became governor of the new gold colony but was forced by Downing Street to relinquish all connection with

Notes on a Visit to Western Tibet in 1926

with each other as far as Khela, in the valley of the Kali river, our frontier against Nepal; from this place the Darma valley branches off to the north, past the lovely Panch Chulha peak, and at its head lies the Nue, or Darma pass, leading direct to Gyanima. The other, and easier, route is up the Kali valley via Garbyang to the Lipu Lek pass, within easy reach of the big market at Taklakot. On this route is encountered the famous, or rather notorious, Nirpania cliff, the worst part of which can now be turned by a detour along the Nepalese bank of the river. The valleys above named pierce the central chain of the Himalaya, and are the home of the Bhotias, a people probably of Tibetan origin, though now professing the Hindu religion. They have a monopoly of the trade between India and Western Tibet, a monopoly of which no one is likely to deprive them while communications remain in their present state. Undoubtedly the easiest of the passes is the Lipu Lek, 16,750 feet high. This can be crossed by mules and ponies eight months in the year ; but it should not be treated with contempt, for I know a Bhotia who lost his toes on it in November, three or four years ago. The Bhotias of Chaudans and Byans, the northern pattis of the Kali valley, usually cross into Tibet in July and return in October. Taklakot is about 7 miles across the border. Under orders from the Government of India, I visited Western Tibet in 1926 to investigate conditions of trade between the Tibetans and the Bhotias. The latter carry up every year grain, rice, cloth, and various kinds of haberdashery, returning with wool, borax, and salt. But for them Western Tibet would probably starve, as the high altitude of most of the plateau, and the nomadic habits of the people, render cultiva? tion impossible. Before the British expedition to Lhasa in 1904 no officers had, so far as I know, visited this part of the country on duty. But in 1905 Mr. C. A. Sherring, of the Indian Civil Service, was deputed to report on trade and to cultivate friendly relations with the officials. He de? scribed his experiences in ' Western Tibet and the British Borderland/ He was followed, in 1908 and 1911 respectively, by Messrs. Cassels and Stiffe, of the same Service, acting under similar orders. Since then a number of complaints from Bhotias concerning trade restrictions had accumulated, and it was thought desirable to have them inquired into.

The Internal Organisation of the Merchant Adventurers of England

The Merchant Adventurers occupied a unique place in the history of England. Their life and activities were closely associated with the most varied phases of the national progress; their influence is seen not only in the municipal and domestic affairs of the realm, but also in many of its most important international relations. Through their branch organisations in the different towns of England the Adventurers were brought into close contact with local and municipal life; through their position as the great buyers and exporters of woollen cloth they came into immediate contact with English industrial development. For several centuries the Society enjoyed a virtual monopoly of the foreign trade in the English cloth manufacture. Its wealth and power became very great, and, as is to be expected, the Adventurers, both as individuals and as a corporate organisation, became potent factors in the field of national politics also—a fact seen most clearly in their participation in the restoration of financial credit in the sixteenth century, and the overthrow of the Stuarts in the seventeenth. In international affairs the Adventurers were connected at a very early date with the active intercourse between England and the Low Countries. Concerned solely with foreign commerce, and strongly supported by the Crown, they gradually secured for themselves the English commerce on the North Sea, and therefore necessarily became the agents and exponents of the successful commercial policy inaugurated by the Tudors. The Fellowship and its activities became the channel through which the mutual influence of England and the Continent in the industrial and commercial world was chiefly transmitted, and the history of the Adventurers strikingly illustrates those larger interests which England in her economic development shared with Europe.