Infrastructure and Logistics in Economic History: a Contribution Based on the Cases of Chile and Mexico , c. 1850-1970

Abstract

This article discusses the relations between transportation infrastructures and socio-technical systems in the 19th and 20th centuries to understand the material foundations of the current globalization process and the relevance of the history of logistic processes and chains of goods. While economic history has given more importance to the production of exportable raw materials and industrial goods, in this paper, we will look at the cases of Chile and Mexico, between 1850 and 1970, and analyze the mobility of factors, their distribution and the coordination of equipment, regulations, routines, and personnel that constituted a processing chain encompassing from the raw materials to the final goods. We suggest that these infrastructures determined a fixed and enduring pattern of long-lasting territorial flows for the so calledmovement chains.