14 - Ready or Not?

Summary

Although debate has long raged about how to understand the emergence of modern industrial society, it has generally been agreed until recently that Europe’s (and especially Britain’s) pioneering role was enabled by certain distinctive features of its history, economy, or society. Today, however, certain scholars deny this, arguing that other societies had reached a level of development from which a transition similar to Britain’s could have emerged, and that the special trajectory Britain followed was enabled only by accidental or incidental factors or circumstances. The two proposed candidates are China and India, and this chapter takes up and seeks to refute the claims made in regard to each, in the process developing comparisons that show the utility of the categories of autonomy and teleocracy employed throughout this book for the history of industry. The impressive achievements of both countries are acknowledged and described, but growth and sophistication are shown to be insufficient without the structural features that made British society the special case it was.