An Economic History Of Regional Industrialization

This book offers a comprehensive study of regional industrialization in Europe and Asia from the early nineteenth century to the present. Using case studies on regional industrialization, the book provides insights into similarities and differences in industrialization processes between European, Eurasian and Asian countries. Important factors include the transition from traditional to modern industrial production, industrial policy, agglomeration forces, market integration, and the determinants of industrial location over time. The book is an invaluable reference that attempts to bridge the fields of economic history, political history, economic geography, and economics while contributing to the debates on economic divergence between Europe and Asia as well as on the role of economic integration and globalization.

A transnational survey of the economic development of Europe, exploring why some regions advanced and some stayed behind.

In From Old Regime to Industrial State, Richard H. Tilly and Michael Kopsidis question established thinking about Germany’s industrialization. While some hold that Germany experienced a sudden breakthrough to industrialization, the authors instead consider a long view, incorporating market demand, agricultural advances, and regional variations in industrial innovativeness, customs, and governance. They begin their assessment earlier than previous studies to show how the 18th-century emergence of international trade and the accumulation of capital by merchants fed commercial expansion and innovation. This book provides the history behind the modern German economic juggernaut.

Why are some countries rich and others poor? In 1500, the income differences were small, but they have grown dramatically since Columbus reached America. Since then, the interplay between geography, globalization, technological change, and economic policy has determined the wealth and poverty of nations. The industrial revolution was Britain's path breaking response to the challenge of globalization. Western Europe and North America joined Britain to form a club of rich nations by pursuing four polices-creating a national market by abolishing internal tariffs and investing in transportation, erecting an external tariff to protect their fledgling industries from British competition, banks to stabilize the currency and mobilize domestic savings for investment, and mass education to prepare people for industrial work. Together these countries pioneered new technologies that have made them ever richer. Before the Industrial Revolution, most of the world's manufacturing was done in Asia, but industries from Casablanca to Canton were destroyed by western competition in the nineteenth century, and Asia was transformed into 'underdeveloped countries' specializing in agriculture. The spread of economic development has been slow since modern technology was invented to fit the needs of rich countries and is ill adapted to the economic and geographical conditions of poor countries. A few countries - Japan, Soviet Russia, South Korea, Taiwan, and perhaps China - have, nonetheless, caught up with the West through creative responses to the technological challenge and with Big Push industrialization that has achieved rapid growth through investment coordination. Whether other countries can emulate the success of East Asia is a challenge for the future. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

This book offers a critical reflection on the meaning and expected impact of the fourth industrial revolution, and its implications for industrial policy. Industrial revolutions are considered not only in terms of technological progress, but also in the context of the changing relationship between market and production dynamics, and the social and political conditions enabling the development of new technologies. Industrial Policy for the Manufacturing Revolution aims to increase our capacity to anticipate and adapt to the forthcoming structural changes. A concrete illustration of this industrial policy is provided through an experience of its implementation at regional level.

This book offers a comprehensive study of regional industrialization in Europe and Asia from the early nineteenth century to the present. Using case studies on regional industrialization, the book provides insights into similarities and differences in industrialization processes between European, Eurasian and Asian countries. Important factors include the transition from traditional to modern industrial production, industrial policy, agglomeration forces, market integration, and the determinants of industrial location over time. The book is an invaluable reference that attempts to bridge the fields of economic history, political history, economic geography, and economics while contributing to the debates on economic divergence between Europe and Asia as well as on the role of economic integration and globalization.

The Industrial Revolution is central to the teaching of economic history. It has also been key to historical research on the commercial expansion of Western Europe, the rise of factories, coal and iron production, the proletarianization of labour, and the birth and worldwide spread of industrial capitalism. However, perspectives on the Industrial Revolution have changed significantly in recent years. The interdisciplinary approach of Reinventing the Economic History of Industrialisation - with contributions on the history of consumption, material culture, and cultural histories of science and technology - offers a more global perspective, arguing for an interpretation of the industrial revolution based on global interactions that made technological innovation and the spread of knowledge possible. Through this new lens, it becomes clear that industrialising processes started earlier and lasted longer than previously understood. Reflecting on the major topics of concern for economic historians over the past generation, Reinventing the Economic History of Industrialisation brings this area of study up to date and points the way forward.

The world has seen a shift in socio-economic relations, in the patterns and processes of industrialization and regional development. The social regulation of the economic order, flexible production organization and industrial district formation have brought periods, places and pathways to the heart of economic debate. Pathways to Industrialization and Regional Development provides a platform from which to address a new economic order. All the major schools of thought are represented. Focussing upon the interactions between economic logic and political institutions at both the local and global levels, the authors set the agenda for the 1990s.

In the late nineteenth century, the United States underwent an extremely rapid industrial expansion that moved the nation into the front ranks of the world economy. At the same time, the nation maintained democratic institutions as the primary means of allocating political offices and power. The combination of robust democratic institutions and rapid industrialization is rare and this book explains how development and democracy coexisted in the United States during industrialization. Most literature focuses on either electoral politics or purely economic analyses of industrialization. This book synthesizes politics and economics by stressing the Republican party's role as a developmental agent in national politics, the primacy of the three great developmental policies (the gold standard, the protective tariff, and the national market) in state and local politics, and the impact of uneven regional development on the construction of national political coalitions in Congress and presidential elections.

The prevailing view of industrialization has focussed on technology, capital, entrepreneurship and the institutions that enabled them to be deployed. Labour was often equated with other factors of production, and assigned a relatively passive role. Yet it was labour absorption and the improvement of the quality of labour over the course of several centuries that underscored the timing, pace and quality of global industrialization. While science and technology developed in the West and whereas the use of fossil fuels, especially coal and oil, were vital to this process, the more recent history has been underpinned by the development of comparatively resource- and energy-saving technology, without which the diffusion of industrialization would not have been possible. The labour-intensive, resource-saving path, which emerged in East Asia under the influence of Western technology and institutions, and is diffusing across the world, suggests the most realistic route humans could take for a further diffusion of industrialization, which might respond to the rising expectations of living standards without catastrophic environmental degradation.