Connections, connections, connections!: the Atlantic copper market during the long twentieth century

In this paper I show how the focus on connections can offer new insights on the relationship between national economic development and natural resource intensity. The popular resource curse hypothesis assumes that the relationship is often inverse: countries rich on natural resources have a tendency to score poorly in economic development. In the first section of this paper I present the institutional, sectoral and more structural analyses of the resource problem, with special attention to the intellectual contribution Andre Gunder Frank made in this respect. The perspectives are confronted with each other, assessing the state-centric analytic focus in all cases. In reaction to this, value chain analysis is introduced as a way to get a better insight on the transnational and corporate aspects that characterize every market for natural resources and influence the economic opportunities of resource rich regions. In the second section, the importance of this perspective is illustrated through a preliminary analysis of the spatial connections within the sphere of the Atlantic copper market during the long twentieth century and the varying benefits these spatial connections had for different regions and states whose economies were strongly dependent on their copper sector