THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION IN SPAIN

While in other European countries, with Great Britain at the forefront, an intense process of industrialization had been taking place since the late 18th century, in Spain this important transformation occurred more slowly and incompletely. Thus, by the end of the 19th century, Spain was still a country with an agricultural base, limited domestic trade, and industrial development restricted to a few regions and specific sectors, such as Catalan textiles, Asturian and Basque steelmaking, and agri-food processing industries in the inland regions. Industrialization, however, gradually began to accelerate.

The first engine of Spanish industrialization was, in imitation of the English model, the textile sector. And it was in Catalonia that a rapid mechanization of factories took place (spinning mules and mechanical looms), which used either coal as an energy source (factories in the cities) or hydraulic power (industrial colonies near rivers such as the Ter or the Llobregat). Wool and silk were also replaced by cotton as the basic raw material, and the rest of Spain became the main market for Catalan textile production. Catalonia thus became the first Spanish region to experience the Industrial Revolutio

JAPAN, A NEW INDUSTRIAL POWER

Since the last third of the 19th century, Japan underwent a profound transformation of its social, economic, and political structures, which ensured its independence from foreign powers and turned it into a major international power.

Until then, Japan had been an almost feudal country. Although the emperor had divine status, real power rested in the hands of a shogun, who held vast authority. Since the 17th century, this position was controlled by the Tokugawa family.

The shogunate’s main support came from the daimyos, landowning nobles who subjected the majority of the rural population to a regime of servitude. In 1853, a U.S. fleet commanded by Commodore Perry arrived in Japan and forced the signing of a treaty opening Japanese ports to international trade, thus ending the country’s deep isolation from the West.