Data in Brief (Aug 2024)
Dataset for the long-term trade (1900–2021) and GDP (1960–2021) statistics of small island economies
Abstract
This historical dataset regarding island and coastal economies has been built with the intent of making up for the gaps and shortcoming of the economic literature on long-term island development. This dataset gathers Imports, Exports, GDP, Population and Exchange Rate data on a yearly basis. The idea was to gather as much data as possible, with the reference period being 1900–2021 for foreign trade and 1960–2021 for GDP data. This dataset is relevant as it opens up new possibilities of long-term systematic comparisons between a great number of territories. Data were collected from international databases (UNCTAD, UN Statistics Division, UN Statistical Yearbook) when available. Some scholarly works were also used, most notably Mitchell [4] and Bulmer-Thomas [2]. When these sources were exhausted, the author went himself to the French Archives (INSEE) and the British National Archives (at Kew) to consult physical copies of colonial reports in order to find data prior to the 1950ʼs. Other islands’ data were reconstructed by contacting the local archives or statistical offices. For the foreign trade dataset, data are expressed in local currencies, then transformed to current USD, to constant 2005 USD equivalent and finally to constant 2005 USD per capita equivalent. These different levels of disaggregation are voluntarily left for each reader to use. For the GDP dataset, data are presented in current USD, current USD per capita and constant 2015 USD per capita equivalent. Different datasets have different levels of disaggregation. Some territories could not be included for practical reasons. The Italian islands are not included as the author could not go to the National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) to consult the data in person. German island colonies in the Pacific could not be studied as the author does not understand the older German. Also, the India Office of the British Colonial Archives has been transferred to Qatar National Library, which scans and makes documents progressively available. Finally, the Western Pacific Archives were transferred to the University of Auckland Special Collections since 2002 and the author could not consult them. A coordinated effort by the research community could resolve these issues.
