The data in this collection consists of historical data relating to trade patterns and development indicators which enabled the testing of, firstly, the role of a reduction in shipping times (brought about through steam technology) in the expansion of world trade in the 19th Century and, secondly, the impact of these changing trade patterns on economic development. Five datasets are included: 1) information on shipping times for different sailing technologies (sail/steam) across roughly 16,000 country pairs; 2) 23,000 bilateral trade observations for nearly 1,000 distinct country pairs (1850-1900); 3) data on the duration of voyages of sailing ships from 1750-1854; 4) country-level data on per-capita GDP, population, exports, urban population; 5) data on freight rates for shipping materials and coal from the ports of Cardiff and Newcastle (1855-1900).

The first dataset, consisting of information on shipping times for different sailing technologies (sail/steam) across roughly 16,000 country pairs, was calculated by the author using geographical information from the Centre for International Earth Science Information Network and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The second dataset, consisting of 23,000 bilateral trade observations for nearly 1,000 distinct country pairs (1850-1900), was constructed by the author from several primary data sources (given in the paper). The third dataset, consisting of the duration of voyages of sailing ships from 1750-1854, was obtained from the Royal Netherlands Metereological Institute. The fourth dataset consists of country-level data on per-capita GDP, population, exports, urban population: data on per-capita GDP was obtained from the Maddison Project Database (Bolt and van Zanden, 2014); population data were obtained from many different sources listed in the online appendix (link given below in related resources); urban population was obtained for the majority of countries form the Cross-National Time-Series Data Archive (Banks and Wilson, 2013), and for the remaining countries from a large number of sources listed in the appendix. The fifth dataset, consisting of freight rates for shipping materials and coal from the ports of Cardiff and Newcastle (1855-1900), was constructed by the author using three different primary sources: the Newcastle Courant (newspaper); the Mitchell’s Maritime Register (weekly journal of shipping and commerce); a publication of freight rates between 1869-1919 (Angrier, 1920). Please see the paper (provided with the collection) for further details, including the references mentioned above.