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The paper aims to begin with a brief review of early banking and finance methods, early logistics routes through Europe, and message delivery modes in medieval China, the paper then proposes to move on to a comparative study of modern logistics modes in the European Union and in India – in particular the ports of Le Havre (France) and Mangalore (Karnataka).

The data are derived from secondary sources, including the local press in India as well as official European Union (EU) documentation.

Given the cultural and political differences between the EU and India, their logistics and hinterland development are very different in deployment and scope: Le Havre “scores” much more highly than Mangalore and the EU is much more coherently developed than India.

Le Havre, France, and the EU are well placed through their integrated logistics development to merge with the proposed Euro‐Asia‐America “land‐bridge” which initially will be based on a redeveloped Trans‐Siberian rail network; whereas the southern “Silk Road” development, taking in India, is floundering due to many factors inhibiting implementation of this new network.

The paper will be of interest to those who wish to view the development of intercontinental logistics routes, and to grasp the future potential for new trade links between the Pacific and the Atlantic ports.

E-commerce businesses have been undergoing rapid development for the last five years in the United States and for the past two years in Europe. This sustained growth illustrates the existence of a demand for this type of service, particularly among the youth. Beyond the startup phase, e-commerce companies are continuing to generate significant losses, which point to organisational defects, the most serious being logistic support to this business. Analysis of the e-commerce issue is delicate, given the haziness of the activity's perimeter. E-commerce startups offer services similar to traditional mail-order, and consumer retailing is not clearly stating its objectives in creating its own e-commerce sites.

Logistics is not an organisational technique that is adapted to the rapid and unpredictable changes that e-commerce is experiencing today. Logistics related problems in e-commerce vary according to the type of commercial activity involved, but they are often considerable and sometimes result from the precipitation with which these activities were set up.