Ores and industry in the Far East. The influence of key mineral resources on the development of oriental civilisation / Руды и промышленность на Дальнем Востоке. Влияние основных минеральных ресурсов на развитие восточной цивилизации

It is often assumed that when China becomes aroused to the need of equipping herself with the tools and technique of America and Europe, there will be a great and rapid industrial and commercial advance comparable with that of England, Germany, and the United States during the last century. Her supposed untold wealth, in uvast resources” of raw materials and man power, when organized, is to produce, we are told, both the fiercest industrial competition the world has ever seen and the greatest potential market. The Industrial Revolution of the West, it is forebodingly asserted, is only the curtain-raiser for the vaster drama of the twentieth century to be played in Asia, where “the stage seems set for catastrophe.”
The Industrial Revolution has not been mis-named. It is one of the major movements in the history of Western civilization, and the countries which have led the way have experienced, historically speaking, an extraordinarily rapid transformation. At the center of the Revolution is a new invention in industrial organization, the institution of the factory system, still in process of evolution. For this as for all such momentous changes, however, a long preparation has been required; a pre-adjustment of social values has been as essential as the accompanying readjustment. The spread of the new economic institutions, from England to the western continent of Europe and thence more haltingly to Spain and Italy and eastward to the Slavic countries, and their migration westward across the Atlantic, have been conditioned not only by institutional and psychological factors but also by factors of economic resources and commercial geography.  <...>