How the Old World Ended

A magisterial account of how the cultural and maritime relationships between the British, Dutch, and American territories changed the existing world order—and made the Industrial Revolution possible

Between 1500 and 1800, the North Sea region overtook the Mediterranean as the most dynamic part of the world. At its core the Anglo-Dutch relationship intertwined close alliance and fierce antagonism to intense creative effect. But a precondition for the Industrial Revolution was also the establishment in British North America of a unique type of colony—for the settlement of people and culture, rather than the extraction of things.

England's republican revolution of 1649–53 was a spectacular attempt to change social, political, and moral life in the direction pioneered by the Dutch. In this book Jonathan Scott argues that it was also a turning point in world history.

In the revolution's wake, competition with the Dutch transformed the military-fiscal and naval resources of the state. One result was a navally protected Anglo-American trading monopoly. Within this context, more than a century later, the Industrial Revolution would be triggered by the alchemical power of American shopping.