ABSTRACT

This chapter examines why and how industrialization is essential to sustained economic growth. It considers why growth processes, before 1700, tended to be abortive in the sense that expansions in population and income gave way, in time, to periods of decline. The chapter summarizes the familiar technical and economic characteristics of industrialization which have made it possible for growth to become a self-sustained process. It also considers in broader terms the interplay between the economic and non-economic dimensions of modernization and the role of industrialization within them. Some societies enter the transition with long histories of successful commerce, and with cultures easily adjustable to modern economic activity; others must develop such activity virtually ab initio, overcoming deep cultural inhibitions. Economic progress must be regarded as both a result of movement towards modernization in other dimensions and as a force making for further change.