Elena Scarfagna Rossi Boeken

The term “industrialization” refers to the system of economic and socio-political changes that reflected the shift from the manufacture system, based on manual labour, to large scale machine industry. Industrialisation began with the invention and application of machinery for production and culminated in the production of machines by machines. As a result, the capitalist mode of production emerged victorious in its struggle against the feudal mode of production. [...] Industrialisation was a general historical phenomenon that characterized a stage in the development of capitalism in the industry of several countries. However, the gradual development of the prerequisites for the shift from manufactures to large-scale machine industry varied from country to country.

It is usual to describe the earliest stages of capitalism as mercantilism, the word denoting the central importance of the merchant overseas traders who rose to prominence in 17th and 18th century England, Germany, and the Low Countries. [...] Under capitalism two realms of authority existed where there had formerly been only one, a realm of political governance for such purposes as war or law and order and a realm of economic governance over the processes of production and distribution. The influence of mercantilist beliefs through to the last decades can still be found in Europe, especially explicated in the economic rivalry between the super-powers.