What drove 19th century commodity market integration?

This paper seeks to answer the titular question of what drove commodity market integration in the 19th century. Using grain markets during the first wave of globalization as a testing ground, the paper builds on the insights of the contemporary trade literature and the economic history of the 19th century and relates levels of market integration to cross-sectional and temporal variations in transport technology, geography, monetary regimes, commercial networks/policy, and conflict. The results of this decomposition analysis are interesting on two counts: first, they verify the commonality of experience of the 19th and late 20th centuries; second, they suggest a very strong role for the commercial, diplomatic, and monetary environment in which market integration took place.