ABSTRACT
The factory system replaced the small workshop, bringing about mass production. The adoption of interchangeable parts for machines allowed for standardization in the manufacture of machine tools and reduced the cost of the construction and repair of factory machines. New technologies also played a role, as the telegraph and telephone gave factory and business owners the ability to coordinate manufacturing schedules, while electric power replaced the more dangerous steam engines and less reliable water wheels. Before mass production, small shops and mills had catered to limited territories. Building large factories required ever-larger sources of capital, so corporations gradually replaced family-owned businesses. By the 19th century, several Western nations—France, Russia, Spain, Germany, Great Britain, and, to a lesser but growing extent, the United States—as well as Japan in East Asia and the Ottoman empire in the Middle East worked to expand their empires in a period sometimes called the age of New Imperialism.
