Jeffry A.Frieden 121Primary Production for Export The approach described herein leads to an
expectation that primary investment will be correlated with the use of force by
home countries and with a relative lack of cooperation among investors. In many
historical episodes, indeed, primary investors were at the forefront of interventionist
agitation; additionally, primary investment is substantially overrepresented in
virtually every colonial setting. The role of mining in sub-Saharan Africa, from
the Congo to the cape, is frequently remarked upon. So, too, are the colonialist
proclivities of those involved in plantation agriculture in East Africa, the Indian
subcontinent, and Southeast Asia. Again, whether the prior existence of primary
investments gave rise to demands for annexation or prior colonial control made
the area attractive to primary investors is immaterial for the theory presented here—
my argument is about the affinity of a form of investment for a form of political
governance.
The interventionist tendencies of the oil industry in the decades before the
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) was formed are well-
known. Evidence about the degree of cooperation among oil investors is less clear-
cut. In some instances, oil companies procured and secured exclusive access to
particular territories: especially within the colonial empires, rights to mine oil
often were reserved explicitly or implicitly for metropolitan firms. However, in
other instances, oil firms cooperated in the joint exploitation of the resource and
presented a united front to local rulers. This was true in parts of the Middle East:
the Red Line Agreement of 1928, for example, reserved much of the former Ottoman
Empire for a few Anglo-Dutch, British, French, and U.S. firms. Cooperation was
repeated elsewhere, as in conflict between oil producers and a nationalist Iranian
regime in the early 1950s. Cooperation among oil investors—rare among other
primary investors—was a function of the very small number of global oil companies
and their dense and longstanding networks of economic and other linkages. As
more independent producers arose, cooperation among oil investors gradually
eroded, although the private cartel was largely replaced by OPEC’s cartel of
governments.
The overrepresentation of British primary investment in the colonies was noted
above. Although similarly well-developed statistics are not available for other
colonial powers, what evidence there is reinforces the impression of the British
data. Some 42 percent of investment in French West Africa was in primary
production; most of the rest (39 percent) was in commercial services, an important
category that we ignore here. Over three-quarters of the Belgian investment in the
Congo apparently was in mines and the railways connected directly to them. Japan’s
overseas investment before World War II was concentrated in China and its colonies.
Assets in Japan’s possessions—Korea, Kwantung, Taiwan, and the South Pacific—
were concentrated almost exclusively in agriculture and raw materials production.
It also may not be coincidental that Japanese investment in Manchuria, where
Japanese political influence (later, direct rule) was strongest, was concentrated in
primary production, while investments in other parts of China were more diversified
and included many manufacturing firms.
A particularly interesting and a difficult case to explain is that of American
overseas investors. Elsewhere I have attempted to show that those most prone to