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The Europeans generated search for labour for working in the estates, plantations and mines. They imitated the cultivation and consumption of sugar from the Arabs. Columbus introduced sugar in West Indies in 1493.

In the far north of North America from AD 1000 onwards, the Palaeo-Eskimos of the eastern Arctic retreated before the eastward migration of the sea faring Neo Eskimos. They used harpoons for hunting whales.

Western naval supremacy over the oceans was the first step in the process of European expansion. The superiority of the Western navies especially as regards long-range bulk transport was one of the principal factors behind the successful establishment of maritime empires in the extra-European world.

China was more unfavorably placed than India at the time of its ‘liberation’ in 1949. It lagged behind India in terms of infrastructure and industrial development.

There have been and are many paths to industrialization between countries. Britain’s transition to capitalist industrialization was not at all typical of the European experience.

As the name indicates, Commercial Capitalism emerged primarily out of profits of trade and commerce. The nature of this trade is considered to be long- distance trade.

Mercantilism, a term coined by Adam Smith, played a very important role in the evolution of Commercial Capitalism. Maurice Dobb refers to it as ‘a system of state regulated exploitation through trade essentially the economic policy of an age of primitive accumulation.’

One very significant change with capitalist industrialization has been the enormous expansion of the middle strata.

Attempts to rein in capitalism were common in a number of countries where socialists were powerful during the inter-war and post-Second World War period.

Underdeveloped (or in economics terms less-developed) country is simply one where the resources of the area are not used to their full potential.

The process of economic growth is determined by two sets of factors. They are economic and non-economic factors:

Underdevelopment is the state of an organization (e.g. a country) that has not reached its maturity. It is often used to refer to economic underdevelopment, symptoms of which include lack of access to job opportunities, health care, drinkable water, food, education and housing.