The Route to the Techno-Industrial World Economy and the Transfer of German Organic Chemistry to America Before, During, and Immediately After World War I

This paper deals with one component of one of the major aspects of hegemonic competition, technological change achieved largely through technology transfer, in this case in the chemical industry. It deals with how the new technology of organic chemistry was created and encouraged in the late 1800s by the global textile industry's need for dyestuffs; how that technology, though invented in Britain, was developed in Germany; and how that technology was finally successfully transferred to America once its central importance to the production of explosives became obvious in World War I. It follows the argument developed by Hugill (1988, 1993) that a switch began in the late 1800s from one form of capitalist world economy to another: from one in which agro-industrial supremacy was what mattered—the argument of Wallerstein (1984)—to one in which techno-industrial supremacy became the main route to the efficiencies demanded by hegemony. It also follows Hugill's argument that software innovations in the way work is done are often more important for success in the world economy than the hardware innovations of what is actually produced (Hugill, 1993). What made the switch from the agro- to the techno-industrial world economy possible was innovation and technology transfer across a wide range of activities, although some technologies turned out to be much more critical than others.