ABSTRACT
This chapter establishes the spatial pattern of industrialisation that emerged in the period before 1914. Apart from the timing of the entry of a country into the industrialisation process, the pattern of the spread of industrial technology displays a number of other interesting characteristics. In reviewing the spread of industrialisation during the nineteenth century, it is convenient to make use of Rostow's concept of the take-off, which, in terms of his theory of the stages of growth, represents the crucial stage in a country's industrial development. Given the existence of the periods of industrial acceleration in a country's economic development, which in effect launch it along a path of sustained economic growth, it becomes possible to describe in diagrammatic form the chronological and geographical pattern of the spread of industrialisation in the nineteenth century. It is also apparent that in some countries that experienced industrial take-off in the period before 1913.
