The Rimmer Model

   

   An alternative and complementary perspective is provided by Rimmer (1977) who outlined the
   development of a hybrid transport system in less-developed countries, derived from the
   colonization process by which metropolitan powers used revolutionary modes ot transport to
   penetrate indigenous systems and to gain both political control and cultural and economic
   dominance. The resultant restructuring of resource use, patterns of circulation, organization
   and outlook transformed the indigenous system, and instituted an interdependen relationship in
   which the colonizing power to a substantial extent controlled a two-way exchange of goods and
   services. This process eventually yielded a hybrid transport system in developing countries
   containing both indigenous and imported elements, often inadequately integrated.

   

   Using terminology derived fram Brookfield (1975), Rimmer identified four phases in the
   evolving interrelationships between metropolitan and Third World countries in transport terms:

   

   1.      A pre-contact phase involved no links between a Third World country and a distant
   power in the advanced world. Within the Third World country, a limited network of tracks,
   together with navigable waterways, supported a relatively restricted socio-economic and
   political system.

   

   2.      An early colonial phase, secondly, involved the establishment of direct contacts by
   sea between advanced and developing countries but did not produce radical changes in Third
   World societes, Europeans being largely content to dominate sea transport routes and to
   establish foothold settlements such as trading posts and garrisons.

   

   3.      A third phase of high colonialism involved more fundamental changes including the
   introduction of roads and railways, port facilities and inland transport nodes, and the
   diversification of economic activity (including industrialization and commercial agriculture)
   and settlement patterns (icluding rapid urbanization).

   

   4.      A fourth neo-colonial phase involves a substantial further diversification of the
   economic development surface ot the Third World country and continuing (if modified) trade
   links with the former metropolitan power. The modernization of the transport system in the
   Third World country involves, at this stage, elements of rationalization, adaptation and
   selective investment in response to changing demands. There is, however, no radical adjustment
   to the systems inherited from earlier phases.