ABSTRACT
It is no secret that the industrial revolution began in the West, first in Britain and then spreading quickly to Belgium, France, the United States, and Germany. By the 1850s, amid great regional variations, this was clearly becoming a Western-wide phenomenon. The result greatly enhanced the West’s power in the wider world. Societies that were not Western, by origin or adoption, proved unable to join the industrial parade until the 1890s at the earliest, and some have not fully signed up even today.
