Spatial unevenness has been a consistent feature of capitalist development since its original rise to prominence in early modern Britain. This is not to say that uneven development is an exclusively capitalist phenomenon (nor, for that matter, that .it is a necessary feature of capitalism - a question that will be discussed in the conclusion to this paper). Clearly, differences in levels of technology and geographical variation in natural resource endowments can give rise to variable levels of development, regardless of economic system - although geographers, and other social scientists, may have been inclined to ·overstress these factors, thereby providing an ideological smoi<escreen for more fundamental processes of uneven development under capitalism (Smith, 1984: 100). Certainly, nowadays, the distribution of natural resources has, at best, only a minor influence on the overall geography of capitalist investment and employment creation.