ABSTRACT
The industrial revolution was the most important single development in human history over the past three centuries. It continues to shape the contemporary world. The industrial revolution was a global process from the first. It resulted from changes that had been occurring in global economic relations, and then it redefined those relations still further—and continues to do so. This book explores what the industrial revolution was and how it recast world history—even beyond the particular societies in which it developed the deepest roots. Industrialization was the most fundamental force in world history in both the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, and it continues powerfully to shape the twenty-first. Two mistakes in dealing with the industrial revolution are particularly common, though understandable. First, the phenomenon is too often pinned to a single time period—the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The second common error involves geography.
