The Impact on the World Economy

Before the 1870s no industrial revolution occurred outside Western society. The spread of industrialization within western Europe, although by no means automatic, followed from a host of shared economic, cultural and political features, as well as frequent and familiar contacts. The quick ascension of the United States was somewhat more surprising: the area was not European and had been far less developed economically during the eighteenth century. Nevertheless, extensive commercial experience in the northern states and the close mercantile and cultural ties with Britain gave the new nation advantages in its rapid imitation of British industrial patterns. Abundant natural resources and extensive investments from Europe kept the process going, joining the United States to the wider dynamic of industrialization in the nineteenth-century West.