Chapter 4 of the book talks about Western industrialization and what it meant for the rest of the world in the 18th and 19th centuries, especially after Napoleon’s defeat in 1815, which is worth study because the opposite process seems to be going on today. Several characteristics of this time are described.

First, a transoceanic and transcontinental trading system developed, rapidly after 1840, with western Europe and especially Great Britain as its trading and finance center.  The process was helped along by advances in transportation and communications and by the removal of the tariff-based mercantilist system, and allowed for Europe to pass from its Great Power politics and war period to a time of economic harmonization and cooperation.

The European powers and the United States did not stop aggressive military action, but instead focused it on the conquest of the less developed but resource rich world. The technological superiority of the west over the rest of the world was also clear in military technology, making resistance difficult.

Before the Industrial Revolution, Indian or Chinese laborers were not too far behind Europeans in productivity, but after European industrialization the absolute level of Chinese and Indian production decreased as cheaper and better European products entered their markets.  The developing world sometimes de-industrialized. Regulations, high wages, and Wall Street, helped by inflation, are reversing this process.