Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
imported from other parts of the world. In the late 1800s
and early 1900s, Japan colonized Korea, Taiwan, and por-
tions of mainland China, which brought capital and
resources for industry. Japan's dominant region of indus-
trialization and urbanization is the
Kanto Plain
(Fig. 12.7),
which contains about one-third of the nation's population
and includes the Tokyo-Yokohama-Kawasaki metropoli-
tan area. Japan's second largest industrial complex extends
from the eastern end of the Seto Inland Sea to the Nagoya
area and includes the Kobe-Kyoto-Osaka triangle, which
is a vast industrial region with steel mills, a major chemical
industry, automobile manufacturing, shipbuilding, textile
factories, and many other types of production.
trade routes and the fi rst wave of colonialism (Chapter 8).
The advent of the steam ship, the diffusion of railroads,
and the telegraph and then telephone quickened global
trade and connected empires in the second wave of colo-
nialism. Through colonialism and trade, capitalism
became the economic foundation of the world-economy
(Chapter 8).
Fordist Production
The manufacturing boom of the twentieth century can be
traced in part to early innovations in the production pro-
cess. Perhaps the most signifi cant of these innovations was
the mass-production assembly line pioneered by Henry
Ford, which allowed for the inexpensive production of
consumer goods at a single site on a previously unknown
scale. So signifi cant was Ford's idea that the dominant
mode of mass production that endured from 1945 to 1970
is known as
Fordist
. In addition to of its role in facilitating
mass production, economic geographers also see the
Fordist system as encompassing a set of political-economic
structures (corporations and political institutions sup-
porting each other) and fi nancial orders (such as the Bretton
Woods arrangement, under which countries adopted the
gold standard, agreeing to peg the values of their currency
to the price of gold) that supported mass production by
corporations.
The Fordist period is marked by a surge in both mass
production and mass consumption. On the Ford assembly
line, machines replaced people, and unskilled workers
instead of craftsmen worked on the assembly lines. Ford
paid his workers a good wage, and droves of job seekers
migrated to the Detroit area to work in the automobile
industry (see Chapter 9). Ford's goal was to mass produce
goods at a price point where his workers could afford to
purchase them. Production of automobiles at Ford's River
Rouge plant in Dearborn, Michigan (Fig. 12.9) exempli-
fi ed the
vertical integration
of production common dur-
ing the Fordist period. Ford imported raw materials, from
coal to rubber to steel, from around the world and brought
them to his plant on the River Rouge in Dearborn, just west
of Detroit. The massive River Rouge Ford plant is better
described as an industrial complex. The Henry Ford
Foundation describes Ford's goal in building the complex
of 93 buildings with more than 120 miles of conveyor
belts that covered an area 1 by 1.5 miles as follows: “Henry
Ford's ultimate goal was to achieve total self-suffi ciency
by owning, operating and coordinating all the resources
needed to produce complete automobiles.” The River
Rouge complex included a power plant, boat docks, fi re
stations, a police department, and a railroad.
Under Fordist production, distance was a major con-
sideration in the location of industry. For example, in the
Examine the map of diffusion of the Industrial Revolution
into Europe (Fig. 12.5) and hypothesize what other charac-
teristics (aside from the presence of coal) were necessary
for industrialization to take hold in these regions.
HOW HAVE THE CHARACTER
AND GEOGRAPHY OF INDUSTRIAL
PRODUCTION CHANGED?
Economic geography provides context for under-
standing a multitude of human geographic developments.
In this topic, we have already made reference to economic
geography to help explain globalization in Chapter 1,
local and popular cultures in Chapter 4, identities and
scale in Chapter 5, language loss and toponyms in Chapter 7,
colonialism and political disputes in Chapter 8, and the
geography of development in Chapter 10. In this section
of the chapter, we incorporate economic geography
principles we introduced in earlier chapters with other
economic geography concepts to provide a context for
understanding changes in the character and geography of
manufacturing and service industries since World War II.
In Chapter 1, we defi ned
globalization
as a set of
processes that are increasing interactions, deepening rela-
tionships, and heightening interdependence without
regard to country borders. We explained that globaliza-
tion is also a set of outcomes that are felt from these global
processes—outcomes that are unevenly distributed and
differently manifested across the world. Improvements in
transportation and communication technologies are at
the root of globalization. The improvement of sailing
ships and navigation methods helped establish global
