Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Field Note
“Paris and the Paris Basin form
the industrial as well as agricul-
tural heart of France. The city
and region are served by the
Seine River, along which lies a
string of ports from Le Havre
at the mouth to Rouen at the
head of navigation for oceango-
ing ships. Rouen has become a
vital center on France's indus-
trial map. As we approached
on the river, you could see the
famous cathedral and the city's
historic cultural landscape to
the left (north), but on the right
bank lay a major industrial com-
plex i n cluding coal-fi red power
facilities (although France leads
Europe in nuclear energy), petro-
chemical plants, and oil installa-
tions. It is all part of the indus-
trial region ce n tered on Paris.”
Figure 12.6
Rouen, France.
© H. J. de Blij.
Industrial developments in one area, such as the
Rühr area of present-day Germany (Germany was not
consolidated into a single country until the 1870s)
changed the port cities to which they are linked—in this
case Rotterdam in the Netherlands. The Rhine River
fl ows through the Rühr area and enters the sea at
Rotterdam. Over the last 200 years, the Dutch have radi-
cally altered the port of Rotterdam to facilitate transpor-
tation and make it the most important port in Europe and
a hub of global commerce.
Once the railroads were well established, some
manufacturing moved to or expanded inside of existing
urban areas with large markets, such as London and
Paris. London was a particularly attractive site for indus-
try because of its port location on the Thames River and,
more importantly, because of its major role in the fl ow of
regional and global capital. By locating itself in London,
an industry put itself at the center of Britain's global net-
work of infl uence. Paris was already continental Europe's
greatest city, but like London, it did not have coal or iron
deposits in its immediate vicinity. When a railroad system
was added to the existing network of road and waterway
connections to Paris, however, the city became the larg-
est local market for manufactured products for hundreds
of miles. Paris attracted major industries, and the city,
long a center for the manufacture of luxury items (jew-
elry, perfumes, and fashions), experienced substantial
growth in such industries as metallurgy and chemical
manufacturing. With a ready labor force, an ideal
regional position for the distribution of fi nished prod-
ucts, the presence of governmental agencies, a nearby
ocean port (Le Havre), and France's largest domestic
market, Paris's development as a major industrial center
was no accident.
London and Paris became, and remain, important
industrial complexes not because of their coal fi elds but
because of their commercial and political connectivity to
the rest of the world (Fig. 12.6). Germany still ranks
among the world's leading producers of both coal and
steel and remains Europe's leading industrial power
(Table 12.1). By the early twentieth century, industry
began to diffuse far from the original European hearth
to such places as northern Italy (now one of Europe's
major industrial regions), Catalonia (anchored by
Barcelona) and northern Spain, southern Sweden, and
southern Finland.
Diffusion beyond Europe
Western Europe's early industrialization gave it a huge
economic head start and put the region at the center of a
developing world economy in the nineteenth century.
But, it was not long before industrialization began to
