The Industrial Revolution and Latin America in the Nineteenth Century

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Beyond the world of Europe and North America, only Japan underwent a major industrial transformation during the nineteenth century, part of that country’s overall response to the threat of European aggression. (See Modernization Japanese Style for a more detailed examination of Japan’s industrialization.) Elsewhere—in colonial India, Egypt, the Ottoman Empire, China, and Latin America—very modest experiments in modern industry were undertaken, but nowhere did they drive the kind of major social transformation that had taken place in Britain, Europe, North America, and Japan. However, even in societies that did not experience their own Industrial Revolution, the profound impact of European and North American industrialization was hard to avoid. Such was the case in Latin America during the nineteenth century.