ABSTRACT
The industrial revolution took place inside an expanding commercial economy, in which foreign trade certainly was the most profitable economic activity. The study of underdevelopment starts with the identification of particular types of structures created in the areas where the new system of international division of labour allowed increases in the net product through changes in the use of the labour power already available. The relations between ‘central’ and ‘peripheral’ countries in the framework of the global system created by the international division of labour have been much more complex than appears from conventional economic analysis. The industrialization of a peripheral country tends to take the form of local manufacturing of those consumer goods which were previously imported, as is well known by all students of the so-called process of import substitution.
