Port Systems and Trading Networks

Abstract

Given the geographical conditions of the new land and the historical particularities of the colonizing system, what cultural patterns did market capitalist forces carve into the landscape of the south-west of Western Australia and how do we delineate them? The primary tasks of market capitalism are to satisfy supply and demand; therefore, supply and distribution networks are essential to the functioning of a market capitalist system. The new addition to the British capitalist system, Australia, is an island continent and, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the only way to set up supply and distribution networks to an island was by sea transport. Therefore, all trade to the Swan River Colony relied on sea transport giving this a primary systematic importance within the new colony. Therefore this chapter examines the growth of southwest trading networks and port system and the effect differential transport cost have on the agricultural and settlement systems of the new colony to delineate the patterns carved into the Western Australian system by its position within a British based market capitalist supply and distribution network