Intro to Chapter 5 and Chapter 18: Industry Cometh

I was surprised at how well the intro to chapter 5 was written. It is not often that I see a piece of writing in a history textbook that strikes me, but that first paragraph did an excellent job of capturing the strange relationship that now exists between the teachings of Confucius (I have read The Analects, and liked it very much) and the full-circle the Chinese government has come regarding their views of them. It also lays the groundwork for the unique relationship that now exists in China between a communist government and a capitalist society. This in turn, is a great segue to chapter 18, which deals primarily with the industrial revolution.

In reading about the industrial revolution, I was very interested in the book's angle regarding why Brittan was the country where it really took-off. It mentions a number of factors that affected various countries' abilities (or lack thereof) to really embrace the industrial revolution. I thought the most interesting, though, was something which is talked about a lot in the politics of America today. It is the idea of the "free market".

Of course, the book doesn't use that language, but as I saw the gist of it's argument for why Brittan was so successful between 1800 and 1900, the themes were pretty clear. "Brittish commercial life encouraged commercialization and economic innovation", "checks on royal authority...provided a freer arena for private enterprise than elsewhere", "Small groups of merchants capitalists might be granted special privileges...European merchants and other innovators from the fifteenth century onward gained an unusual degree of freedom from state control."

In the name of full disclosure, I tend to lean pretty far to the left, and a disagree with many of the pro-business arguments from the right which say that less government is better and that taxes only stifle growth, money trickles down, free market works, etc. This was an interesting read for me, then, because it gave me some insight into the other side. Sure evidence for my arguments are in the book as well (the lower class working conditions grew awful, the exploitation of natural resources grew, etc). But it does raise the question that unless the mechanics of today's society are fundamentally different that those of the 1800's (and thus the situations are not anaologous), should the government of America really back off a little and let the corporations do their thing if we want to remain a leader in terms of technological development?