The Tentacles of Progress

Daniel Headrick, author of the highly acclaimed Tools of Empire , here examines why the massive transfer of Western technology to European colonies did not spark an industrial revolution in those countries. Rather than spurring economic progress, he argues, the transfer of stock technology between 1850 and 1940 caused the traditional self-sufficient economies of the colonial regions to be stuck in a state of underdevelopment, a legacy which burdens these countries to this day. He goes on to consider the introduction into the colonies of innovations in communications (e.g. shipping, railways, telegraphs), commercial agriculture, resource extraction, and industrial production, contrasting it with the efforts of European colonial administrators to limit the diffusion of technological knowledge among native populations. Historians interested in economic, industrial, and colonial history.