TRANSPORTATION. The carrying of per sons and goods from place to place. The part which transportation plays in the practical life of a community depends most directly upon the complexity of its economic system. Wherever the division of labor and the localization of in dustry have reached a high degree of develop ment transportation necessarily attains a cor respondingly high development. The rise of in dustry on a great scale and the creation of effi cient means of transportation mutually condi tion each other.
More than a thousand years before our era Phoenician ships were trading in tile Mediterra nean, and later along the shores of the same sea the Greek cities built up their colonial and trade system. Rome was relatively late in develop ing maritime traffic, but by the time of the Em pire an extensive commercial system had arisen, bringing to Rome the raw produce of Sicily and North Africa, and extending westward even be yond Gibraltar. Ancient land transport was comparatively insignificant. The Greek roads were chiefly to sacred places, such as Delphi, and their economic importance was small. The Ro man roads were established for military rather than economic reasons, but they were vastly more extensive. Centring at Rome, they not only stretched through Italy, hut (under the Empire) to Constantinople and Asia Minor, along parts of the north coast of Africa, westward to Spain, over the Alps to Gaul, and through Britain. Ex cellent as these roads often were, their method of construction was wastefully expensive from the modern standpoint.
The return to a more primitive economy in the early Middle Ages meant that for a time trans portation should cease to play any important part in the economic life of Europe. The sali ent points in the story of its gradual revival are the stimulus given by the Crusades to trade with the East, the consequent growth of the Italian cities, and, in the twelfth century. the formation of the great trade league (Hansa) ) of the North European towns. Although the rise of towns and tile establishment of fairs made a certain amount of land or river transport necessary, it was slow, insecure, and costly, and, at least on the Continent, was subject to burdensome and arbitrary tolls. The destruction of the Eastern
caravan routes through the Turkish and Mongol invasions gave especial importance to the dis covery of an ocean route to the Indies made by Portuguese navigators at the end of the fifteenth century. The introduction of the compass made trans-oceanic voyages readily possible. The dis covery of America made them profitable, and helped to shift the centre of trade from the Medi terranean to the Atlantic, from the Italian cities to the Portuguese, the Spanish, and the Dutch. The growth of colonial empires, based essentially on transportation, marks a most important era in the world's economic history.
more adequate means of transport, which only the railroad and the steamship could supply. Through them, in the nineteenth century, inter national industry has been made possible.
The following table, from the Report of the United States Commissioner of Navigation (1902), shows the Merchant Marines of the World, according to Lloyd's Register (1902 03). Only vessels of over 100 tons are included.
Land transport lagged far behind that on the sea. With the growth of centralized nations a political motive arose for the improvement of roads and of internal trade. Under Louis XIV. (1643-1715), during the Ministry of Col bert, the French roads were greatly bettered, and many of the local tolls were put aside. In England little effective action was taken by the central Government, and, despite many 'Turnpike Acts' (granting rights to levy tolls in return for maintaining roads) the English highways remained poor throughout the eighteenth cen tury, till the efficient road-making methods of MeAdam (1756-1836) and Telford made possi ble the great improvements of the nineteenth. In the United States, as in England, private or local activity has been chiefly relied on for road making. Private turnpikes were constructed in colonial times, and during the 'internal im provement' era, after 1800, Federal roads were built. has been recently carried on systematically in many parts of the United States.