The Origins of the Modern World: A Global and Ecological Narrative from the Fifteenth to the Twenty-first Century

As late as the 18th century, “China, India, and Europe were broadly comparable in […] their level of economic development, standard of living, and people’s life expectancies” (131). In the 19th century a split began between the wealthy developed world (mainly of the West and Japan), and the impoverished “Global South.” China’s demand for opium helped transform India from “one of the world’s greatest industrial centers” (136) into a mainly agricultural society because the Indian textile industry had collapsed, partly because of competition from Britain’s industrialized textile industry. However, Britain had colonized India, a process that began when the East India Company took over Bengal and created its own army of Sepoy or Indian mercenaries, which it then used to take over other Indian lands. By the middle of the 19th century, the British government directly ruled India. British policies deliberately sought to “transform India into a producer of food and raw materials for export” (138) to benefit the British economy.

Industrialization spread to other countries by the late 19th century. The process of industrialization in France was hindered by the fact that peasants held on to land they gained during the French Revolution of 1789. The US both industrialized and expanded its agricultural sector due to its westward expansion at the expense of Indigenous Americans, becoming “a major exporter of food in global markets” (141).