The Industrial Revolutionaries: The Making of the Modern World, 1776-1914 by Gavin Weightman

Book Review - Five Stars


The Industrial Revolutionaries: The Making of the Modern World, 1776-1914 by Gavin Weightman is an excellent presentation of the most revolutionary era of human history when the population reached a billion with world altering consequences.
Meet the self-motivated innovators with their creative minds that one by one trail blazed the stepping stones of accumulative knowledge that took man to the moon, exploited the earths resources on every continent and to the depths of the seas, and made medical miracles and world wide communication instantaneous. Man, in art the of war  is a genius, and at peace he is a complete bungler.

Excerpts:
Between 1773 and 1776, some 6,000 emigrants left Britain for America and the West Indies, a fifth of them settling in Philadelphia, which was to become a center of the textile industry. They were not all, of course, skilled craftsmen. Just over half, according to the records kept in England, were “indentured” servants, that is to say, they were under a contract of some kind with an employer in America and their passage across the Atlantic was paid. There were families, including women and children and a few elderly emigrants, but the typical passenger was a man in his early twenties, paying his own way and hoping for a better living than he had back home. There were a few who put themselves down as “laborer” but the majority had some kind of trade or business: enameller, peruke-maker, muff-maker, mathematical instrument-maker and so on. More than 250 different skills were recorded. The great majority were headed for the eastern seaboard of America, only 5 per cent staying in the West Indies, and half of those in Jamaica. In the American colonies, Maryland, a staging post for migrants moving elsewhere, was the most favored destination, followed by Pennsylvania, Virginia and Nova Scotia.



The victorious United States of America, which then comprised the thirteen states of the eastern seaboard, was no longer a British colony but a foreign country to which all the prohibitions on the emigration of skilled men and machines applied. From that time on, until the lifting of the emigration ban, artisans leaving Britain for America had to indulge in the same subterfuge as those heading to France or other European countries.



...the German research departments were dedicated to science-based discoveries, well-equipped and staffed with lawyers to ensure their patents were safeguarded.
political freedom was founded in economic and commercial independence and they were determined to be beholden to nobody.



Industrialism gave rise not only to wealth but also to military might,
It was evident that industrialism gave rise not only to wealth but also to military might, and that nations which remained economically “backward” were vulnerable.
Japan was persuaded to industrialize



When it comes to democracy, prosperity and rule of law, Protestant societies, above all, the Nordic countries of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, have generally done better than Catholic nations.
Confucian societies such as Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and now China have produced transforming economic growth. Islamic countries, even those with oil, have not.