Investment in Infrastructure (INVEST)

The development of the infrastructure is a prerequisite for and consequence of the mise en valeur of a colony. Harbors were crucial, as well as the transport links (railways, streets) into the interior, followed by local transport systems such as tramways, telecommunications, and gas, electric, and water works. Because of the different situations and needs for infrastructure, we decided not to refer to specific historical data (railway miles etc.) but to code more general colonial investment in infrastructure as ‘not significant/modest/huge’:

• 0 = no significant colonial investment in infrastructure / not applicable
• 1 = moderate colonial investment in infrastructure (e.g. some streets and bridges, not more than one railway line to the coast, only isolated irrigation measures)
• 2 = huge colonial investment in infrastructure (e.g. a railway net and streets linking major parts of the colony, sea harbor(s), and/or channels/irrigation measures in a significant part of the colony)

The way of financing these investments (public/private) does not matter here. Investment in infrastructure by non-colonial governments/agencies, e.g. the Ottoman railway system built before World War I, are not considered. The International Historical Statistics Data Set (Mitchell 2007: 537ff) has been an important source for the coding of infrastructure, controlled by colony-specific sources and complemented for countries/areas not mentioned.

Apart from the semi-colonial countries and Mongolia, we found no evidence for significant colonial investment in Bhutan, Nepal, three British colonies at the Persian Gulf (Oman, Qatar, Emirates), four French controlled areas in Africa (Central African Republic, Chad, Niger, Mauritania) as well as in Portuguese Guinea-Bissau and Italian Somalia. 27 colonies (one third of the sample, mainly landlocked African countries, areas in Western Asia that were colonially dominated only for a short period such as Syria and Lebanon as well as some Pacific island colonies) had only modest investment in infrastructure, while 39 countries (47%) experienced the development of a complex colonial infrastructure.

As expected, this indicator for the level of economic transformation correlates with many others (see 'Descriptive Statistics'), such as plantations, gold, mining, trade policy, trade concentration, investment concentration but also with foreign presence (FORPRES). Also not surprising is the fact that colonial investment was higher in more directly ruled colonies (DOMFORM) which were held for a longer period of time (COLYEARS). Investment in infrastructure also seems to have triggered more anti-colonial resistance (VIOLRES), probably because it required a higher level of resource mobilization out of the colony. Regarding the level of colonial investment in infrastructure, there are no statistically significant differences between sub-Saharan Africa and Asian/North African countries and French/British colonies.