[nerdponx]

> America was an economic backwater until the 1900s.

That seems like a stretch.

My understanding is that plantation cash crops grown in the South like Cotton were a major export in the early-mid 19th Century.

And then of course Standard Oil was incorporated in 1870.

Maybe the effect of American industrialization didn't have a big effect internationally until the ~1890s and onward, but I'd hardly say the USA was a backwater throughout the industrial revolution.

[chimeracoder]

> Maybe the effect of American industrialization didn't have a big effect internationally until the ~1890s and onward, but I'd hardly say the USA was a backwater throughout the industrial revolution.

The US had a huge effect on industrialized Europe before that. The British textile revolution would never have happened if the US hadn't supplied a large chunk of the cotton (from plantations in the South) and if the British hadn't physically destroyed the the-dominant textile industry in India.