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Abstract
This article employs spatial analysis techniques to examine adjustments in crop production in response to the completion of the Illinois and Michigan (I&M) canal in 1848. The scope of the analysis is the particular geographical transportation system focused on St. Louis and Chicago in the mid-nineteenth century. At that time the rapid development of improved modes of transport transformed the ability of productive growing areas to reach the market with their surplus. Using geographical information systems (GIS) to develop the necessary data (parameters, coefficients, networks, etc.), the article examines the redirection of Illinois's agricultural production toward the Great Lakes transportation system then emerging at Chicago. The reactions are presented as a set of equilibrium adjustments, and are contrasted with previous efforts, such as a famous counterfactual analysis by Fogel. Rather than attempt to work backward from a world with rail to a more primitive system of wagon and water transport, as Fogel does, this analysis works forward from a preexisting system and shows that the impacts of the changes produced further reinforcing dynamics. The article aims to incorporate spatial analytic models into historical studies with the aid of GIS.
Acknowledgments
Andrew Michael and Diane Carducci helped with the data preparation. Thanks to Hyun Kim and Jim DeGrand for drafting the diagrams and maps. Comments from Larry Brown, Philip Brown, Mansel Blackford, Bill Childs, John Hudson, Rick Steckel, and the referees are acknowledged with thanks. A preliminary version of these ideas was presented to the 2005 SPACE Workshop at The Ohio State University.
Notes
Source: Extracted and reorganized by the author from a manuscript in the collection of the CitationIllinois State Archives: A Selection of Documents from the Illinois and Michigan Canal, 1827–1911. Document 42–Partial Statement of Goods Cleared along the Canal.
Source: Author's calculations.
Source: Author's distance computations and Census Agricultural Data for 1840, 1850, and 1860.
Note: Modeled allocation of crops to the two centers is based on aggregate cluster production of wheat and corn for 1840, 1850, and 1860.
1. R. Steckel, Presidential Address to the Social Science History Association, Portland, Oregon, November 2005. Personal communication, 16 November 2005.
2. An earlier effort to determine the land use impact of canal development using pre-GIS mapping is described in CitationLeaman and Conkling (1975).
3. As early as 1673 Marquette and Jolliet followed the Illinois from its mouth at the Mississippi up to the Desplaines River “and ascended that source to the Chicago Portage” (CitationBoylan 1933, 6).
4. The precedents for such a combined historical-spatial view are well established in geography; see CitationPeet (1969), CitationChisholm (1962), and CitationHudson (1985, Citation1994).
5. To be precise, the network distance is measured between the two termini: Bridgeport (near Chicago) and Grafton (near St. Louis).
6. The nodes were created by joining the point layer to the river using a technical step in CitationTransCAD.
7. The role of river transport to St. Louis is reviewed in superb detail by CitationMahoney (1990). He, however, pays relatively little attention to the post-canal impact, preferring to focus on the important role of the upper Mississippi valley on the trade area of St. Louis.
8. Although von Gerstner (CitationGamst 1997) stated that the Illinois River provided a navigable channel from its mouth to LaSalle (and even Ottawa at high water), the analysis in CitationPutnam (1918) suggests that the river was in need of substantial improvement in channels, especially for steamboat traffic. Because these improvements were not in place until the mid-1800s the pre-canal model is run with an assumption that the river provided limited access to St. Louis. Other support for the notion of the river's limited impact at the earlier dates is given by CitationMacGill (1917, 514), who notes that the interior of the state, is “without natural means of transportation” with the exception of comparatively small areas tributary to the Illinois and Kankakee Rivers. See also CitationMahoney (1990).
9. Convergence to a unique equilibrium is guaranteed under some reasonable mathematical conditions. A full treatment is beyond the scope of this article, but see CitationNagurney (1993) for the conditions for existence, uniqueness, convergence, and stability of the derived equilibrium. Future work is intended to follow up this issue and to exploit the many advantageous mathematical properties explained in Nagurney. It turns out that formulation of this problem in price terms (as in this article) requires only weak conditions on the supply and demand functions (which ours meet) and that as a useful by-product of the formulation one gains access to some powerful qualitative “what if” results and sensitivity analysis.
10. This effect was noted previously in CitationChisholm (1962) and CitationO'Kelly (1988).
11. See CitationCronon (1991, 67). In this case Cronon is referring to the rapid uptake in the Galena and Chicago Union railroad.