A Forgotten Instrument of Global Capitalism?International Concessions, 1870–1930
2013; Routledge; Volume: 35; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/07075332.2013.820773
ISSN1949-6540
Autores Tópico(s)Political Economy and Marxism
ResumoAbstractFrom the mid-1800s through the 1930s, concessions were an institutional foundation of modern capitalism about which we have little systematic, comparative knowledge. Concessions - contracts given by governments in less-developed states to foreign investors - supplied elements that were lacking in the host country, including a congenial legal order and an attractive investment environment. Cash-poor governments eager to modernise often added special privileges and monopoly rights to concessions in order to attract capital. In Africa and Asia, all the colonial powers granted concessions to promote the building of infrastructure and development of commercial agriculture without burdening the Treasury. After providing a global survey of concessions with special attention to Russia, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and French West Africa, the author concludes that concessions, by their nature, entailed contradictions that made them a 'third best' option for political elites eager to incorporate peripheral regions into the world economy.Keywords: concessionmodernisationforeign investmentcapitalism Notes1. J. Conrad, Nostromo (New York, 1983), 78.2. Wilson, 'Address on Latin American Policy in Mobile, Alabama', 27 Oct. 1913, in A. S. Link, Collected Papers of Woodrow Wilson (Princeton, 1978), xxviii. 448–9.3. E. Waugh, Black Mischief (New York, 1960), 20.4. Francisco Bulnes denounced the 'extraordinary system' of concessions in Mexico that consisted of 'propositions made by foreign capitalists. .. to install some important enterprise. . . at from double to tenfold the amount it ought legitimately to cost.' Bulnes, The Whole Truth about Mexico (New York, 1916), 24. On the contrary positions of Marcus Garvey and W. E. B. Du Bois on rubber concessions in Liberia, see F. Chalk, 'Du Bois and Garvey Confront Liberia: Two Incidents of the Coolidge Years', Canadian Journal of African Studies, i, no. 2 (1967), 135–42. See Lenin's Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (New York, 2003), especially 'The Place of Imperialism in History' and Luxemburg, Accumulation of Capital (New York, 2003), especially chapter 30, 'International Loans'.5. On the century before the First World War as globalisation's first golden age of globalisation, see among others K. O'Rourke and J. Williamson, Globalization and History: The Evolution of a Nineteenth-Century Atlantic Economy (Cambridge, MA, 2001).6. Estimates of overseas investment appear in L. Jenks, The Migration of British Capital to 1875 (New York, 1973), 335; A. Cairncross, Home and Foreign Investment, 1870–1913 (Brookfield, VT, 1992), 186; H. Feis, Europe: The World's Banker, 1870–1914 (New York, 1964), 27; L. Davis and R. Huttenback, Mammon and the Pursuit of Empire (New York, 1988), 56.7. Herbert Feis noted that of the sovereign bonds sold in London 'much over half was used for such matters as railroad construction, municipal public utilities, roads, and harbor works', while in the case of the Paris money market 'much of the government borrowings were used to build railroads, ports, to found banks and to improve cities'. Feis, Europe: The World's Banker, 26, 58; quote on xxv.8. Jenks, Migration of British Capital, 196, 282; C. Lipton, Standing Guard (Berkeley, 1985), 53–4.9. Jenks, Migration of British Capital, 168–9.10. Jenks, Migration of British Capital, 218.11. C. Domville-Fife, States of South America (New York, 1920), 18012. J. Fred Rippy, The United States in Mexico (New York, 1926), 31213. For the flavour of press coverage on the Reuter concession, see the New York Times, 29 July 1873, 4; on the Chester concession, see the Wall Street Journal, 14 April 1923, 3; on Firestone in Liberia, see the Chicago Daily Tribune, 27 June 1925, 4.14. The New York Times, 16 Oct. 1885, 3.15. One reason for that neglect may be the fact that 'international concessions, that is concessions granted by one state to the nationals of another state, belong to that class of economic phenomena, which on account of the arbitrary division of disciplines. .. fail to find their proper pigeon-hole - as they cut across most of them.' T. Guldberg, 'International Concessions, A Problem of International Economic Law', Acta scandinavica juris gentum, xxv, fasc. 1–2 (1955), 19.16. The only published collection of concession agreements notes that the Greeks and Romans employed mining concessions: the first concession reproduced in the collection is from the fifth century A.D. See P. Fischer (ed), A Collection of International Concessions and Related Instruments, vol. 1 (Dobbs Ferry, 1976).17. A sampling of the records of Industrias Nuevas, in the Fondo of Fomento y Obras Públicas in the Archivo General de la Nación in Mexico finds applications to create new industries to pack fish and meat, make chemicals, extract plant fibres, and manufacture textiles, bottle caps, electric lamps, electrical appliances, nails and metal tubing; refine sugar, make calcium carbonate, barrels, bicycles, aluminium, dynamite, crackers, safes, clothing, coke, metal type, and screws; galvanise steel, make rubber, explosives, silk cloth, beer and soda, cure leather, and produce electrical and other machinery. (Based on a review of caja 39, expedientes 1–8; caja 40, expedientes 1–11; caja 41, expedientes 1–5; caja 42, expedientes 1–8; and caja 43, expedientes 1–6.)18. S. Haber, Industry and Underdevelopment (Stanford, 1989), 38, 91–3.19. For a detailed study of concession policy in the Dominican Republic from 1876 to 1916, see C. Veeser, 'Concessions as a Modernizing Strategy in the Dominican Republic', Business History Review, lxxxiii, no. 4 (2009), 731–58.20. E.W. Edwards, British Diplomacy and Finance in China, 1895–1914 (Oxford, 1987), 33.21. C. U. Ilegbune, 'Concessions Scramble and Land Alienation in British Southern Ghana, 1885–1915', African Studies Review, xix, no. 3 (1976), 18.22. Because the foreign consuls who ruled in the Chinese concessions had the right to lease land to foreigners and regulate tariffs, and since the legal system in the enclaves was European, the concessions became the nuclei of foreign commerce, investment, banking, and manufacturing. 'The bulk of China's foreign trade is handled by foreign and Chinese merchants resident in concessions and settlements,' one observer noted in the 1930s. 'In addition the foreign-controlled cities on Chinese soil are also the center of foreign investment.' K. Bloch, 'The Basic Conflict over Foreign Concessions in China', Far Eastern Survey, viii, no. 10 (10 May 1939), 111. See also T. Go, 'The Future of Foreign Concessions in China', Pacific Affairs, xii, no. 4 (1939), 394–9.23. J. Forbes Munro, 'Monopolists and Speculators: British Investment in West African Rubber, 1905–1914', Journal of African History, xxii, no. 2 (1981), 271.24. New York Times, 29 July 1873, 4.25. S. Sirtaine et al., 'How Profitable are Infrastructure Concessions in Latin America? Empirical Evidence and Regulatory Implications', World Bank Group (August 2004), viii, 4.26. The editor of the first published collection of international concession agreements defines them as 'agreements between States and non-State entities' but adds that as such they relate 'invariably to rights or functions proper to the State that it is indisposed or unable to exercise or perform itself directly' before admitting 'it is not, in fact, possible a priori to exclude any subject matter from the possible sphere of a concession'. Fischer, International Concessions, xv, xix.27. Guldberg, 'International Concessions', 71–2.28. E. H. Feilchenfeld, 'Concessions', Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, ed. Edwin R.A. Seligman (New York, 1937), iii. 156.29. See for example F. B. Sayre, 'Change of Sovereignty and Concessions', American Journal of International Law, xii, no. 4 (1918), 705–43 and Guldberg, 'International Concessions', 18–34, which emphasises premature termination of concessions.30. C. Paine and E. Schoenberger, 'Iranian Nationalism and the Great Powers: 1872–1954', MERIP Reports, xxxvii (May 1975), 3–28; Feis, Europe: The World's Banker, 361.31. M. Ballay, Commission de Concessions Coloniales, Séance 7 Mai 1900, p. 11, Direction des Affaires politiques 2/53, [Aix-en-Provence, France], [Fonds Ministériels,] A[rchives] N[ationales d']O[utre-]m[er].32. 'The complete collapse of Russia in 1917 may be traced - partly at least - to a violent nationalist reaction against the policy which involved a large measure of foreign control in the industry and finance of the country.' L. L. T'ang and M. S. Miller, 'The Political Aspect of International Finance in Russia and China', Economica, xiii (1925), 73. 'Much of the nationalistic sentiment evoked today in Mexico over foreign investment derives from the prominence attained by foreign enterprises during the lengthy Díaz regime.' S. Maviglia, 'Mexico's Guidelines for Foreign Investment: The Selective Promotion of Necessary Industries', American Journal of International Law, lxxx, no. 2 (1986), 283.33. E.W. Edwards, British Diplomacy and Finance in China, 1895–1914 (Oxford, 1987), 37–8, 49–50.34. See editorial comment (anonymous), 'The Recent Anglo-Russian Convention', American Journal of International Law, i, no. 4 (1907), 979–84.35. See discussion of Soviet Russia below; on Ethiopia see C. Schaefer, 'The Politics of Banking: The Bank of Abyssinia, 1905–1931', International Journal of African Historical Studies, xxv, no. 2 (1992), 361–89. 'Concession granting was used as a political tool for economic development by undeveloped states,' Charles Schaeffer notes, but '… receiving concessions was also a political tool employed by European nations to perpetuate their imperialist agendas.' Schaefer, 'The Politics of Banking', 361.36. The growth of a modern industrial economy required the reform of legal systems that had developed for agrarian, mercantile societies. See, for the US case, Morton J. Horwitz, Transformation of the American Law, 1780–1860 (Cambridge, 1977) and M. Sklar, United States as a Developing Country (New York, 1992).37. C. Lipson, Standing Guard, 4, 8, 12; J. Bassett Moore quoted in Cyrus Veeser, A World Safe for Capitalism (New York, 2002), 112.38. Few general works on international concessions exist. See Fischer, International Concessions, vols. 1–13; K. S. Carlston, 'International Role of Concession Agreements', Northwestern University Law Review, lii (1955); T. Tin Fah Huang, 'Juridical Aspects of International Concession Agreements (Excerpts)', (Unpublished thesis, Harvard Law School, 1952); and Guldberg, 'International Concessions'.39. In the El Triunfo Case of 1907, a US tribunal raged against the cancellation of a concession by the government of El Salvador: 'It is abhorrent to the sense of justice to say that one party to a contract, whether such party be a private individual, a monarch, or a government of any kind, may arbitrarily. .. arrogate the right to condemn the other party to the contract. .. and to impose upon him the extreme penalty of forfeiture of all his rights.' Quoted in Huang, 'Juridical Aspects', 94–5. Similarly, in 1904, a mixed tribunal found in favour of a New York investment company against the Dominican Republic, despite the firm's dubious business practices and unscrupulous alliance with a feared dictator. On the Dominican arbitration, see C. Veeser, A World Safe for Capitalism: Dollar Diplomacy and America's Rise to Global Power (New York, 2002), especially chapter 7.40. Huang, 'Juridical Aspects', 94–5.41. S. Haber, A. Razo, and N. Maurer, Politics of Property Rights: Political Instability, Credible Commitments, and Economic Growth in Mexico, 1876–1929 (New York, 2003), 2, 10, 50.42. Under the tsars Russia offered concessionaires 'state aid of various kinds—tariff protection, bounties, subventions, or a state guarantee of capital and interest'. G. S. Queen, 'Wharton Barker and Concessions in Imperial Russia, 1878–1892', Journal of Modern History, xvii, no. 3 (1945), 202.43. Gaceta Oficial (Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic) no. 430, 9 Sept. 1882, 2 (hereafter GO).44. Legalistic definitions deny that privileges are intrinsic to concessions. 'A concession agreement reflects one aspect of the process of foreign investment. It is an instrument of co-ordination whereby a state and a foreign investor establish a complementary system of relationships in the conduct of an enterprise for a defined period. It includes the grant by the state to the concessionaire of the privilege to enter into the system of economic relationships defined by the instrument. Its essential character, however, is that of co-ordination, and the grant of privilege by the state is but an incident of the co-ordinated activity contemplated by the agreement.' K. S. Carlston, 'Concession Agreements and Nationalization', American Journal of International Law, lii, no. 2 (1958), 260.45. G. S. Queen, 'Wharton Barker and Concessions in Imperial Russia, 1878–1892', Journal of Modern History, xvii, no. 3 (1945), 205; S. J. S. Cookey, 'The Concession Policy in the French Congo and the British Reaction, 1898–1906', Journal of African History, vii, no. 2 (1966), 267, 271; Henderson, 'Germany's Trade', 9.46. Haber et al., 'Politics of Property', 50.47. International Labour Conference, Forced Labour, 202–3, 216–18, 224, 227–8, quote on 198.48. New York Times quoted in J.H. Mower, 'The Republic of Liberia', Journal of Negro History, xxxii, no. 3 (July 1947), 290. The International Labour Conference examined the charges against the Liberian concession in 1930 and found that labour levies imposed on local chiefs tended toward forced labour, given that the concession 'will necessitate the employment of 300,000 to 350,000 native labourers, while the total population of the country is reported to be only one and a half million'. International Labour Conference, Forced Labour, 227.49. International Labour Organization, Forced Labour Convention (Geneva, 1930).50. K. E. Bailes, 'The American Connection: Ideology and the Transfer of American Technology to the Soviet Union, 1917–1941', Comparative Studies in Society and History, xxiii, no. 3 (July 1981), 423. For a contemporary view of Russia's underdevelopment, which notes that 'our only need is capital', see P.A. Kozmin, 'Some Features of the Russian Economic Situation', Journal of Political Economy, xii, no. 2 (1904), 261–70, quote on 269.51. Queen, 'Wharton Barker', 209, 203.52. 'Lenin had long regarded American technology as the world's most advanced and had often expressed enthusiasm for the idea of infusing Russian industry with American capital and know-how.' P. S. Gillette, 'Armand Hammer, Lenin, and the First American Concession in Soviet Russia', Slavic Review, xl, no. 3 (1981), 360.53. The need for guarantees was noted in the particular case of a massive railway repair facility in A. Heywood, 'Soviet Economic Concessions Policy and Industrial Development in the 1920s: The Case of the Moscow Railway Repair Factory', Europe-Asia Studies, lii, no. 3 (May 2000), 549, 561.54. A. Hammer, The Quest for the Romanoff Treasure (New York, 1932), 64, 66, quoted in Gillette, 'Armand Hammer', 362, 356.55. The low figure is given in Bailes, 'American Connection', 427, 433, while higher figures are cited from several sources in Heywood, 'Soviet Economic Concessions', 550.56. Heywood, 'Soviet Economic Concessions', 549.57. Quoted in Thomas Tin Fah Huang, 'Juridical Aspects', 12.58. In December 1929 political police raided the offices of some of the foreign concessions while 'other concessionaires were arrested for violation of the labour code and were in some cases sentenced to a year of forced labour'. C. B. Hoover, 'The Fate of the New Economic Policy of the Soviet Union', Economic Journal, xl, no. 158 (1930), 188.59. P. Dosal, 'The Political Economy of Guatemalan Industrialization, 1871–1948: The Career of Carlos P. Novella', Hispanic American Historical Review, lxviii, no. 2 (1988), 326–7. Recent works on the use of concessions by Latin American liberals include William Summerhill's detailed discussion of Brazil's railroad concession policy. Frank Safford notes that Colombia granted monopolistic concessions in the 1830s to promote 'production of a good by modern techniques' but that the policy changed by 1840 when the state realised that 'privileges, rather than promoting the establishment of new industries, might be delaying their implantation'. Summerhill, Order against Progress: Government, Foreign Investment, and Railroads in Brazil, 1854–1913 (Stanford, 2003); F. Safford, 'The Emergence of Economic Liberalism in Colombia', 51–2, in Love and Jacobsen (eds), Guiding the Invisible Hand (New York, 1988).60. The executive had the power to 'celebrate contracts of general interest' but had to submit these to congress for approval. Colección de Leyes, Decretos y Resoluciones, tomo 8 (Santo Domingo, 1929), 144.61. Veeser, 'Concessions as a Modernizing Strategy', 741–743.62. GO 558, 11 April 1885, 1; GO 412 6 May 1882, 3; and GO 508, 26 April 1884, 3.63. GO 831, 26 July 1890, 3.64. Decreto 3060, 24 June 1891, Colección de Leyes, Decretos y Resoluciones, tomo 12 (Santo Domingo, 1929), 141–2.65. Veeser, 'Concessions as a Modernizing Strategy', 750–756.66. On the Merrill concession, see correspondence dated 16 June, 1 July, 22 July, and 3 Sept. 1896, in Fomento y Obras Públicas, Industrias Nuevas, caja 3, expediente 4. For an example of a similar case in which the concession for an ironworks was denied because 'the concessionaire would have a competitive advantage' over itinerant blacksmiths 'who don't enjoy the same privileges', see caja 15, expediente 1 and caja 18, expediente 1, all in Archivo General de la Nación, México.67. E. Beatty, Institutions and Investment: The Political Basis of Industrialization in Mexico Before 1911 (Stanford, CA, 2001), 135–6.68. Although concessions were granted to many companies in Africa, Bismarck's plan failed, and German taxpayers paid some £100 million (about US$500 million) to underwrite the colonies from 1884 to 1914. W. O. Henderson, 'Germany's Trade with Her Colonies, 1884–1914', Economic History Review, ix, no. 1 (1938), 7, 9, 13.69. K. Dike Nworah, 'The Politics of Lever's West African Concessions, 1907–1913', International Journal of African Historical Studies, v, no. 2 (1971), 248.70. C. U. Ilegbune, 'Concessions Scramble and Land Alienation in British Southern Ghana, 1885–1915', African Studies Review, xix, no. 3 (1976), 17–18.71. S. Michael Persell, The French Colonial Lobby, 1889–1938 (Stanford, 1983), 100, 107.72. Persell, Colonial Lobby, 103; E. Rabut, 'Le Mythe Parisien de la Mise en Valeur des Colonies Africaines a l'Aube du Xxe Siecle: La Commission des Concessions Colnoiales, 1898–1912', Journal of African History, xx, no. 2 (1979), 272.73. M. Cotelle, Commission de Concessions Colonials, Séance 7 de Mai, 8, Direction des Affaires politiques 2/53, ANOM.74. M. Ballot, Governor of Dahomey, Commission de Concessions Colonials, Séance 7 de Mai, 20; M. Viard, Commission de Concessions Colonials, Séance 8 de Mai, 37, Direction des Affaires politiques 2/53, ANOM.75. See, for example, the comments of M. Ernaux and M. de Lange, Commission de Concessions Colonials, Séance 14 de Mai, 50, Direction des Affaires politiques 2/53, ANOM.76. M. Daudi, Commission de Concessions Colonials, Séance 14 de Mai, 51, Direction des Affaires politiques 2/53, ANOM.77. M. Ballay, Commission de Concessions Colonials, Séance 7 de Mai, 13, Direction des Affaires politiques 2/53, ANOM.78. M. Cotelle, Commission de Concessions Colonials, Séance 7 de Mai, 13, Direction des Affaires politiques 2/53, ANOM. On Cotelle's belief that monopoly was essential to concessions, see Rabut, 'Mythe Parisien', 274.79. M. Daudi, Commission de Concessions Colonials, Séance 14 de Mai, 51, Direction des Affaires politiques 2/53, ANOM.80. M. Cotelle, Commission de Concessions Colonials, Séance 7 de Mai, 10, 12, Direction des Affaires politiques 2/53, ANOM.81. Their implausible solution was to educate African consumers to appreciate the quality of French products. M. Philippart, Commission de Concessions Colonials, Séance 29 de Mai, 69–70, Direction des Affaires politiques 2/53, ANOM.82. M. Ballay, Commission de Concessions Colonials, Séance 7 de Mai, 13, Direction des Affaires politiques 2/53, ANOM.83. M. Philippart, Commission de Concessions Colonials, Séance 29 de Mai, 70, Direction des Affaires politiques 2/53, ANOM.84. M. Chailley-Bert, Commission de Concessions Colonials, Séance 30 de Mai, 74; M. Philippart, Commission de Concessions Colonials, Séance 29 de Mai, 70, Direction des Affaires politiques 2/53, ANOM.85. M. Cotelle, Commission de Concessions Colonials, Séance 30 de Mai, 74, Direction des Affaires politiques 2/53, ANOM.86. Persell, Colonial Lobby, 111.87. Moreover, as both officials and concessionaires noted: 'The requirement to build public works does not appear in the concession agreements.' Governor General de L'Afrique Equatoriale Francaise to Minister of Colonies about Société des Sultanats de Haut-Oubangui, 30 Janvier 1915, Direction des Affaires politiques 2/18, ANOM.88. L'Alimaïenne to Minister of Colonies, 4 Mai 1910, Direction des Affaires politiques 2/18, ANOM.89. Heywood, 'Soviet Economic Concessions', quote on 564.90. See E. H. Feilchenfeld, 'Concessions', in Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, ed. Edwin R. A. Seligman (New York, 1937), iii. 154-160, and D. L. Sills, ed., International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York, 1968).
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