ABSTRACT
To achieve some grasp of the present or the future we start, as always, by turning to the past for a sense of what can happen. Many anthropologists have concluded that contacts between different societies are probably the most effective and surely the most common occasions for cultural change. Such contacts include small-scale military incursions, trade, and the arrival or return of individual foreign travelers (whether Marco Polos or ordinary tourists). We focus on the historical effects of the rise of the bourgeoisie and of industrialization on the West and on the subsequent effects of these events on other societies. If the industrialization was reasonably effective, we often refer to it as modernization or progress. In the past for most societies these three terms—industrialization, modernization, and progress—could be used more or less interchangeably. Another rough synonym used to be Westernization, but this no longer applies.
