EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

The Initial Impacts of the Industrial Revolution: An “Astonishing Reversal” – 1771–1850

Eduardo Albuquerque

Chapter Chapter 3 in Technological Revolutions and the Periphery, 2023, pp 43-74 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract The mechanization of the textile production in Great Britain led the structural changes behind the “astonishing reversal” which was the transformation of India in an importer of cotton textiles – an important step in the reconfiguration of the center-periphery divide. Triggered in 1771, this technological revolution had among its sources a learning of techniques originating from the East, especially from India. Its initial impact included an expansion of slavery for the production of cotton, with long-lasting consequences in Africa and in the Americas. The global diffusion of cotton industrialization is a puzzle for Beckert (Empire of cotton: a global history. Vintage Books, New York, 2014). This chapter investigates that puzzle, after evaluating the impact of slavery as a form of cotton production and the effects of cheap British textiles on previous producing regions. The propagation of textile industrialization is related to changes at the center – the maturing of an industry of textile machines – and at the periphery – a delayed formation of absorption capacity at uneven speeds. This chapter evaluates the arrival and initial diffusion of the mechanized textile industry in India, China, Russia, Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, identifying its uneven spread.

Keywords: Cotton industrialization; Slavery and cotton production; Technological transfer from India; Textile machine making; Periphery; Uneven spread of textile industries; Limited industrialization; New international division of labor (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:conchp:978-3-031-43436-5_3

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783031434365

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-43436-5_3

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Contributions to Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-23
Handle: RePEc:spr:conchp:978-3-031-43436-5_3