ABSTRACT
The industrial rise of Britain spurred West European and US businesses. There were profits to be made and industries to defend lest British exports overwhelm the entire manufacturing base. The British role in stimulating wider industrialization was particularly crucial into the 1840s. Individual Britons continued to contribute thereafter, but by this point the industrial revolution was firmly anchored in Belgium, France, the United States, and Germany, and was developing deep native roots. The French industrialization process featured some relative lags and a greater degree of government involvement than the British model. It emphasized concurrent transformation of craft production. German industrialization got under way later than the French version. Along with Germany’s rise, US industrialization formed the great new economic success story in world history between 1850 and 1900. The spread of rapid industrial revolutions to Belgium, France, Germany, and the United States effectively converted the bulk of Western society into an industrial economy by the 1870s.
