2 Comments

1. xotammieox says:
   November 29, 2009 at 7:11 am

   in which country? Every country was different
2. Joe M says:
   November 29, 2009 at 8:02 am

   According to the original sector classification of Jean Fourastié, an economy consists of a “Primary sector” of commodity production (farming, livestock breeding, exploitation of mineral resources), a “secondary sector” of manufacturing and processing, and a “Tertiary Sector” of service industries. The industrialisation process is historically based on the expansion of the secondary sector in an economy dominated by primary activities.

   The first ever transformation to an industrial economy from an agrarian one was called the Industrial Revolution and this took place in the late 18th and early 19th centuries in a few countries of Western Europe and North America, beginning in Great Britain. This was the first industrialisation in the world’s history.

   The Second Industrial Revolution describes a later, somewhat less dramatic change which came about in the late 19th century with the widespread availability of electric power, internal-combustion engines, and assembly lines to the already industrialised nations.

   The lack of an industrial sector in a country is widely seen as a major handicap in improving a country’s economy, and power, pushing many governments to encourage or enforce industrialisation.

   Most pre-industrial economies had standards of living not much above subsistence, meaning that the majority of the population were focused on producing their means of survival. For example, in medieval Europe, 80% of the labour force was employed in subsistence agriculture.

   Some pre-industrial economies, such as Ancient Athens, have had trade and commerce as significant factors, enjoying wealth far beyond a sustenance standard of living. Famines were frequent in most pre-industrial societies, although some, such as the Netherlands and England of the 17th and 18th centuries, the Italian city states of the 15th century and the ancient Greek and Roman civilisations were able to escape the famine cycle through increasing trade and commercialisation of the agricultural sector. It is estimated that during the 17th century Netherlands imported nearly 70% of its grain supply and in the 5th century BC Athens imported 75% of its total food supply.

   Industrialisation through innovation in manufacturing processes first started with the Industrial Revolution in the northwest and in the Midlands of England, around the 18th century.[1] It spread first to Europe and North America during the 18th and 19th centuries, and it later spread to the rest of the world.

   n the 18th and 19th centuries, Great Britain experienced a massive increase in agricultural productivity known as the British Agricultural Revolution, which enabled an unprecedented population growth, freeing up a significant percentage of the workforce from farming, and helping to drive the Industrial Revolution.

   The new manpower couldn’t dedicate to agriculture due to the lack of land; besides, this was not needed either because the higher productivity mechanised farming granted allowed a single peasant to feed a bigger number of otherwise employed workers. On the other hand, new agriculture techniques increased the demand for machines and other hardware, traditionally provided by the urban artisans. Artisans, collectively called bourgeoisie, employed rural exodus’ workers to increase their output and meet the country’s needs. The growth of their business coupled with the lack of experience of the new workers pushed to a rationalisation and standardisation of the duties the in workshops, thus leading to a division of work, that is, a primitive form of Fordism. The process of creating a good was divided into simple tasks, each one of them being gradually mechanised in order to boost the productivity, therefore the income. The accumulation of capital allowed investments in the conception and application of new technologies, enabling the industrialisation process to self-sustain.

   The industrialization process formed a class of industrial workers who had more money in their pockets to spend than their agricultural cousins. They spent this on items such as tobaco and sugar and created new mass markets which stimulated more investment as merchants sought to exploit these. [2]

   The mechanisation of production spread to the countries surrounding England in western and northern Europe and to British settling colonies, making those areas the wealthiest since, and shaping what is now know as the Western world.

   Incidentally, the possession of exploitation colonies eased the accumulation of capital to the countries that possessed them, speeding up their development. The consequence was that the subject country integrated a bigger economic system in a subaltern position, emulating the countryside who demands manufactured goods and offers raw materials, while the metropole stressed its urban posture, providing goods and importing food. A classical example of this mechanism is the triangular trade, who involved England, southern United States and western Africa. This polarity still affects the world, and deeply retarded the industrialisation of what is now known as the Third World.

   Some have stressed the importance of natural or financial resources that Britain received from its many overseas colonies or that profits from the British slave trade between Africa and the Caribbean helped fuel industrial investment. It has been pointed out, however, that slave trade and the West Indian plantations provided less than 5% of the British national income during the years of the Industrial Revolution.[

   After the Convention of Kanagawa, which was issued by Commodore Matthew C. Perry, had forced Japan to open the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to American trade, the Japanese government realised that drastic reforms were necessary in order to stave off Western influence. The Tokugawa shogunate abolished the feudal system. The government instituted military reforms to modernize the Japanese army and also constructed the base for industrialisation. The government vigorously promoted technological and industrial development which eventually brought Japan to become a powerful modern country.

   In a similar way, Russia suffered during the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War. The Soviet Union's centrally controlled economy decided to invest a big part of its resources to enhance its industrial production and infrastructures in order to assure its own survival, thus becoming a world superpower. [4]

   The other European communist countries followed the same developing scheme, albeit with a less emphasis on heavy industry.

   Southern European countries saw a moderate industrialisation during the 1850s-1870s, caused by a healthy integration of the European economy, though their level of development, as well as those of eastern countries, doesn’t match the western standards.

   Except for Japan where a moderate industrialisation took place in the 1870s, a totally different pattern of industrialisation followed in East Asia, where there was an acceleration in industrialisation. In the 1960s, a network of small privately-owned factories spread across four small countries known as the Asian tigers, focusing their activities on the exportation of low value added goods to rich countries.[citation needed] This specialisation, allowed by the existence of stable governments and well structured societies, was favoured by a low cost workforce, a favourable exchange rate, and low custom duties. Because of the success of those initial policies, the Asian tigers have recently been trying to step forward in this stage and diversify their economies.

   This starting model was afterwards successfully copied in all eastern and Southern Asian countries, including communist onesThe success of this phenomenon has led to a huge wave of offshoring, that is, western factories or tertiary corporations choosing to move their activities to poor countries where the workforce is less expensive and less collectively organized.

   China and India, while roughly following this development pattern, were forced to adopt, because of their weight specific policies. China’s government is actively investing in expanding its own infrastructures and securing the required energy and raw materials supply channels, is supporting its exports by financing the United States balance payment deficit through the purchase of US treasury bonds, and is strengthening its military in order to endorse a major geopolitical role.[citation needed]

   India’s government is investing in specific vanguard economic sectors such as bioengineering, nuclear technology, pharmaceutics, informatics, and technologically-oriented higher education, openly overpassing its needs, with the goal of creating several specialisation poles able to conquer foreign markets.[

   Both China and India have also started to make huge investments in Third World countries, making them significant players in today’s world economy.