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International Trade
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In September 2008, the BBC launched an ambitious project to follow The Box. The Box in question was an ordinary shipping container, except it had been painted with the BBC logo and equipped with a GPS transmitter. The plan was to follow it as it moved around the world. (The project is named after a book by Marc Levinson that describes how the humble container changed the face of world trade.) Within a few weeks, The Box had travelled around the British Isles, crossed the Mediterranean, sailed down the coast of Africa and headed across the Indian Ocean. It had been spotted on the road, on trains and of course on ships. A project like this is only possible and only interesting because of the development of the modern economy and technology. For one thing, the GPS tracking device just became small enough and affordable enough to play a role in the past few years. Further, the journey piques our curiosity because we have no idea where the container is going next or what it will be carrying. This is another new development. For most of the history of world trade described in the previous chapter, merchants knew exactly what was in their boxes, and had a pretty
good idea of the route those containers would take. Today, the shippers know the next destination of a cargo and the composition of the load, but these can change according to the opportunities and obstacles encountered. A project like The Box shows in a strikingly visual fashion what we mean by trade networks, or the intricate patterns formed by the flow of goods across the planet.
Patrick Love and Ralph Lattimore - Personal Name
1st Edition
NONE
International Trade
Management
English
OECD
2013
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