ABSTRACT
More conventional versions of the industrialization story begin with English textiles, and trade again looms large. Trade was central to British industrialization because the principal fiber of the textile revolution, cotton, was always an import that Britain could not grow at home. To be sure, the early industrial age involved much more than textiles. But in almost all accounts cotton remains a critical leading sector of industrialization—and so foreign trade remains a critical, though sometimes underappreciated, part of the story. Although joining the international economy may not increase the financial resources or incentives available for industrialization, it is bound to increase knowledge of technological alternatives. In China cotton cloth gradually became the fabric of choice for almost everybody; peasants wore the coarser grades, and even the very rich wore some cotton in rotation with their silks. Petroleum became the world's most valuable internationally traded good in the twentieth century, which is why it has been christened the century of oil.
