3.5.3 Route development models
The growth of roads, railways, canals, and the like is inextricably into woven the whole process of economic growth and regional development. One of the few attempts to bring together the broad regularities in the growth of internal transport lines has been by Taaffe, Morrill and Gould (1963 in the paper considered in Section 3.5.2. On the basis of specific study of the growth of transport in Ghana and Nigeria, with less intensive study of Brazil, British East Africa, and Malaya they proposed a four phase of development sequence (Figure 3.23).
Phase One consists of a scatter of small ports and trading posts along the coast of the hypothetical region being developed (Figure 3.23A). Each small port has a small inland trading field but there is little contact along the coast except through occasional fishing boats and irregular traders. This phase they identify in Nigeria and Ghana as running from the fifteenth century to the end with of indigenous peoples around a of the nineteenth century groups European trading station.