ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the Industrial Revolution in England. It shows how it transformed the international political economy from a Mercantile-dominated system into a new pattern known as Free Trade Imperialism. The first industrial revolution did not occur in Spain, which profited immensely from its colonies, but rather in England, where colonial trade organized along Mercantile lines did yield some benefits, though on a comparatively modest scale. Spanish colonization had closed England out of the most lucrative parts of the New World, but England managed to get a foothold in some Caribbean islands in addition to the marginal areas it claimed along the shores of North America. The factory form of industrial production prevailed, but its control passed from the hands of merchants as a class to a mixed group who became England's industrial bourgeoisie. The chapter concludes that the Latin American struggles around independence and the definitions of the new nation-states in this international context.
