As the name might suggest, the Industrial Revolution brought industry to the fore as the main economic power. Merchants and traders wealth were no longer the standard to be measured by as the captains of industry amassed more wealth than the world had ever seen before.

The Treaty of Kanagawa was signed by representatives of the Japanese and American governments in 1854. It opened Japan to trade with western nations, specifically the United States. It also formally ended Japan’s centuries long period of isolationism.

During the Industrial Revolution the demand for raw resources, to be used in manufacturing and heavy industry, increased dramatically. Subsequently the standard of living began to rise as more luxury goods became more readily available to the common person, which led to a further increase in the demand for manufactured products. In this way the Industrial Revolution reinforced itself - industrial innovations led to a demand for more raw resources; rising wages and availability of luxury goods led to an improved standard of living; improved standard of living led to a demand for more manufactured products, which in turn led to a renewed demand for more raw resources.

Matthew Perry was a commodore in the United States’ navy in the middle of the nineteenth century. In 1852 Perry was tasked by American President Millard Fillmore to force the opening of Japanese markets to American trade. Perry achieved this through gunboat diplomacy - he sailed into Japanese waters and essentially threatened to bombard Japanese cities unless his demands were met. His actions led to the opening of Japanese markets to American trade and the end of Japanese isolationism.

The Wealth of Nations was published by the enlightenment thinker Adam Smith in 1776. The Wealth of Nations outlines how nations can and do acquire wealth. It was widely influential and contributed to the break from mercantilism and the embracing of free market capitalism that marked Europe in the early years of the Industrial Revolution.

Adam Smith was a prominent academic in the 1700's. He is considered to be the father of the field of economics. He was a prolific writer and theorist on the subject of wealth and how nations economic policies affect each other.

Cottage Industry practices were against everything the industrial revolution represented. Whereas most manufacturing until the 19th century had occurred in homes or local shops, new technology and urbanization promoted the rise of factories and large companies who manufactured goods cheaply and began trading them around the world.

The Slave Trade Act was passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom in 1807.

The invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney in 1793 dramatically accelerated the productive capabilities of America’s cotton plantations. So much so that by the outbreak of the Civil War, seventy years later, America was producing more than half of the global supply of cotton - approximately sixty-five percent.

The Industrial Revolution began first in Britain. It then spread outward to Northern Europe, countries like France and Germany embraced the Industrial Revolution in the early nineteenth century. The United States was swept up in the Industrial Revolution by the mid nineteenth century and was shortly thereafter joined by Japan (following the Meiji Restoration in 1868). Russia, with its massive serf population and agrarian society, was not well-suited to the adoption of the Industrial Revolution. It took many decades of forced social change and economic hardship before Russia finally embraced the Industrial Revolution at the dawn of the twentieth century.