Geoeconomic Imaginations and Economic Geography in the Early Twentieth Century

Abstract

The geoeconomic discourses that underpinned the commercial expansion of the United States in the first decades of the twentieth century drew on and produced an imagined geography that positioned the United States in the center of a world in which commerce and trade moved freely around a globe comprised of nations whose economic growth potentials were just being realized. Drawing on two case studies of large corporations that expanded outside the United States, and in response to scholarly interrogations of the historicization of geoeconomics and geopolitics, I argue that geoeconomic imaginations fueled and legitimized economic expansion in the early decades of the twentieth century, thus refiguring the narrative that positions geoeconomics as a more recent phenomenon and reconceptualizing the term geoeconomics as a discursive field. In addition, by analyzing the intersections of the discourses of civilization, geoeconomics, and commercial geography, I provide an important new chapter in critical examinations of the histories of geography.

Los discursos geoeconómicos que apuntalaron la expansión comercial de los Estados Unidos en las primeras décadas del siglo XX produjeron y se aprovecharon de una geografía imaginada que posicionaba a los Estados Unidos en el centro de un mundo en el que el comercio y el intercambio se movían libremente alrededor de un globo compuesto de naciones cuyo potencial de crecimiento económico apenas se estaba reconociendo. A partir de dos estudios de caso de grandes corporaciones que se expandieron fuera de los Estados Unidos, y en respuesta a los cuestionamientos académicos de la historización de la geoeconomía y la geopolítica, arguyo que las imaginaciones geoeconómicas alimentaron y legitimaron la expansión económica en las primeras décadas del siglo XX, reconfigurando así la narrativa que coloca a la geoeconomía como un fenómeno más reciente y conceptualizando el término geoeconomía como un campo discursivo. Además, al analizar las intersecciones de los discursos de civilización, geoeconomía y geografía comercial, aporto un nuevo e importante capítulo en los exámenes críticos de las historias de la geografía.

Key Words:

• Argentina
• commercial geography
• economic geography
• geoeconomics
• geopolitics
• Russia

Palabras clave:

• Argentina
• geografía comercial
• geografía económica
• geoeconomía
• geopolítica
• Rusia

Acknowledgments

This article first took shape as a keynote address at the Critical Geography conference held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 2010, and I am indebted to the conference organizers and participants for their encouraging comments and questions. Three anonymous reviewers provided important suggestions that clarified and strengthened my arguments, as did the helpful guidelines provided by the journal editor, Audrey Kobayashi. I am grateful to Lois Kaufmann for her incredibly helpful and generous assistance while at the Citigroup archives and to Citigroup for graciously providing permission for me to use the archive and reprint several images from it. I also thank Lee Grady of the McCormick–International Harvester collection at the Wisconsin Historical Society for granting permission to use several images. I could not have completed this research without the wonderful assistance provided by Mónica Farías in Buenos Aires, and Elena Trufanova in Moscow. The research for this article was supported by the National Science Foundation (Grant 0647818). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Notes

Exactly how and why the United States chose informal over formal empire, and the ways in which this particular course of economic expansion eventually led to its hegemonic global position, has been long discussed and analyzed by scholars (see, e.g., LaFeber 1998; Slater and Taylor 1999; Cross 2000; Stoler 2001; and Agnew 2005) and is not the focus of this article.

To accomplish this task, I have drawn on three major sets of historical sources: (1) corporate archives, (2) publications produced by these companies including corporate newsletters, advertising brochures, and informative pamphlets; and (3) U.S. consulate records in Buenos Aires and Moscow.

The U.S. consulate reports from Buenos Aires are filled with data that document the rapid increase in sales of manufactured goods to Argentina during World War I, a trend that continued after the war.

This idea was also long-lived. For example, the geographer Richard Momsen, Jr. (1960) opened his booklet titled “Argentina,” a booklet that formed part of the American Geographical Society's “Around the World Program” (a series of educational pamphlets geared toward schoolchildren), thus: “In many ways, Argentina resembles the United States. To drive across the level Pampa is like crossing the prairies of Illinois or Indiana. … Historically, also, our countries have much in common … Argentina, like the United States and Canada, owes much of its present progress to the waves of immigrants who came from Europe.”

It is estimated that the Bank lost over $10 million, approximately 13 percent of its total capital. See Cleveland and Huertes (1985) and Domosh (2010).

For a more detailed analysis of this image, see Domosh (2006).