Growth & Diffusion of Industrialization - AP Human Geography

The least-cost theory is attributed to Alfred Weber. The least-cost theory suggests that all major corporations make their decisions about where to house their production and manufacturing facilities based on the least possible combination of costs, so as to derive the greatest possible profit. It is instrumental for understanding the nature and decision making process of multinational corporations.

The Industrial Revolution arrived in Germany during the 1850s and quickly exploded. By the 1860s Germany’s economy was fully industrial and quickly catching up to Great Britain. In 1871 the German states were finally unified and industrialization progressed more rapidly, by the turn of the century the German industrial capacity was the strongest in the world.

Rostow's Stages of Economic Growth include the following five stages: Traditional Society; Preconditions for Take-Off; Take-Off; Drive to Maturity; and Age of High Mass Consumption. Rostow's model is one of the most significant historical models of economic growth. The model does not include "Postmodern Society."

A “footloose company” is not tied to any particular location and can relocate in response to changing economic conditions. All of the products—except diamonds—are either going to cause the companies that produce and sell them to be either market or material oriented. This is because diamonds that are mined are the product that is sold by the company. In other words, there is no assembly required. Subsequently, there is no need to consider the relative merits of locating manufacturing centers closer to raw materials or large markets.

Because it drastically changed economic production, the Industrial Revolution transformed the nature of population distribution. The sweeping changes happened immediately because they were so closely linked to the drastic transformation in factory work. Beginning first and most noticeably in the Northern European nations, people moved more and more to large cities that sprang up inland based on rail networks and industrial centers.

The Industrial Revolution truly took off in England's Midlands, especially around the city of Manchester, after a few technological innovations in the textile industry. These made clothing, which used to be made at home expensively, cheap and easy to attain. This revolution caused new factory jobs to be available and reduced the need for people working on farms, which allowed people to leave the countryside and flock to cities.

The Industrial Revolution began in northern England in the first half of the nineteenth century. The Industrial Revolution involved the use of heavy machinery in manufacturing for the first time. It completely altered the social, economic, and political makeup of Europe, and later much of the rest of the world.

Henry Ford invented the Model-T, the first mass-produced automobile. He also popularized the use of assembly lines and mass production. The concept of the assembly line, and the cheap mass production it provides, is closely associated with Ford to the point where it is sometimes called “Fordism.”

By the first half of the twentieth century Germany, the United States of America, Russia, and Japan (along with France and the United Kingdom) were the major industrial centers of the world. China has only recently undergone its own rapid industrial revolution and is currently transitioning towards a consumer-based economy.

Although all of these industries would rapidly be affected by the Industrial Revolution, the first industry to be affected was the textile industry. A “textile” is a type of hand-produced or machine-produced fabric (like clothes). Before the Industrial Revolution the textile industry was concentrated in small cottage industries that produced unique products, but in small quantities and at a relatively inefficient cost. After the Industrial Revolution the textile industry was transformed. Textile manufacturing was transitioned to factories that produced large quantities of uniform products in an extremely cost effective manner.

The Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain in the first half of the twentieth century and quickly spread to the European continent; however, it did not take off as quickly in Russia. The reasons for this are primarily to do with the Russian social and economic situation compared to the situation in Western Europe at the same time. To put it simply, Russia had no urban working class, only rural serfs who were tied to the land they worked on. In 1861 the serfs were emancipated and Russia began its unwieldy movement towards industrialization. Progress was slow for the first two decades, but by the mid-1880s Russian industry was beginning to takeoff and in the 1890s it exploded as the Russian state deliberately involved itself in the development and ownership of manufacturing centers.

In the first half of the nineteenth century, the Industrial Revolution began in northern England. It spread fairly quickly to southern England and then spread throughout the continent via Belgium, northern France, and Germany.

The term “cottage industry” refers to a business that rather than being carried out in a factory, where it would be more profitable but also more uniform, is instead carried out in people’s homes. Cottage industries were preeminent before the Industrial Revolution and remain influential for people who want to make money, or buy products, outside of the commercial factory system.

At the start of the Industrial Revolution, demand for coal soared. People began to rely less on wood and more on coal. Coal also became easier to produce and move.

The Industrial Revolution brought former farmers into the cities to work in factories. These farmers used to grow food for themselves and their families and now needed other ways to get food. Canning foods was a simple solution that made it possible for cities to have access to food.

All are true except the resistance to change. The Southern states would've welcomed technological advances if it meant that life would be easier for them, but they didn't have the necessary provisions in place to become industrialized as quickly as the North did.

Walt Whitman Rostow's 1960 model of stages of economic growth describes how societies become modern, industrial economies over five separate stages. The "take-off" stage, which is the third step, describes the moment when societies move toward full industrialization in certain specific ways, such as technological innovations, urbanization, production of secondary goods such as textiles, and intense growth in specific sectors.

Introduction of investment from external sources is a characteristic of the second stage of Rostow’s model so we can eliminate that answer choice and the one that reads “all of these answers are correct.” Although, social and political change can accompany the third stage of Rostow’s model they do not define it in the way that large-scale investment in manufacturing and infrastructure do. In Rostow’s model the third stage represents the biggest revolutionary change in a country’s economic development. It is when the majority of employment transitions from primary economic activities to secondary economic activities - as has happened recently in China.

The fourth stage of Rostow’s stages of Development primarily involves the development of a large commercial economy, something akin to consumer-capitalism. It also generally involves favorable integration into the global economy.