ABSTRACT
Since the late nineteenth century the chemical industry has played a key, if often underestimated, role in national strategies of industrialization. Initially this was evident in its origin in dyestuffs and other products related to textiles, the motor of the first industrial revolution. Its importance for the manufacture of explosives and poison gas was recognized during World War I. Its military value was reinforced in World War II by its ability to create substitutes for scarce strategic materials such as rubber. By the mid-twentieth century innovations in plastics, synthetics, fertilizers, pesticides and paints were contributing to a variety of rapidly growing sectors from agriculture to automobiles.
