主题：从萧条到繁荣，再到萧条 -- 西瓜子

Please feel free to translate them into Chinese.

America was an exception: without political independence, it could not win economic sovereignty. Without its high tariff system in 19th century against British and European industrial products, its domestic manufacturing industry would not have developed and matured into global dominance in early 20th century.

North America finally surpassed its master during the 2nd industry revolution in 1870s.

Canada practised similar high-tariff policy against Europe and Britain. That's why I can call Canada and America two "traitors" and "gravediggers" of the British imperial preference system.

The true "sheep" in the commonwealth are New Zealand and Australia: look at what they sell on the global market EVEN TODAY, you can clearly see how ass-kissing they are when they deal with their British masters. But anyway, even today, most Australians still identify themselves as Britons and are proud of that.

In 18th century, British empire has SPECIFIC LAW: no export of textile machinery technology to North America (actually French kingdom practised the same policy against its North American colony--Nouvelle France (New France), today's Quebec). Therefore, one British worker memorized all technical details of textile machinery and then replicated everything in States. He was called "Father of American Factory system"--what a nasty "British traitor"...

while, if you "stole" technology for America, you are hero.

If you steal tech from America, you are "pirates", Chinese style.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Slater

key: Samuel Slater (May 4, 1768 – April 21, 1835) was an early American industrialist popularly known as the "Father of the American Industrial Revolution" or the "Father of the American Factory System" because he brought British textile technology to America. A native of England, he was apprenticed to Jedediah Strutt in Belper as a manager in a cotton mill of the type pioneered by Richard Arkwright at Cromford.

In 1789 he violated a British emigration law that prohibited the spread of British manufacturing technology to other nations. When he left for New York, he had memorized the plans for the mill and had a deep understanding of Strutt's managerial practices. He offered to sell his knowledge to American industrialists, doing so to Moses Brown of Providence, who used the plan, and made major profit. He soon found work in Rhode Island replicating British factory equipment for a textile mill, and earned the owner's backing to design and build the first water-powered cotton mill in the United States.

Other nasty tricks played by Britons against Americans:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/beard/history-us/ch04.htm

The Acts against Manufactures. – The second group of laws was deliberately aimed to prevent colonial industries from competing too sharply with those of England. Among the earliest of these measures may be counted the Woolen Act of 1699, forbidding the exportation of woolen goods from the colonies and even the woolen trade between towns and colonies. When Parliament learned, as the result of an inquiry, that New England and New York were making thousands of hats a year and sending large numbers annually to the Southern colonies and to Ireland, Spain, and Portugal, it enacted in 1732 a law declaring that “no hats or felts, dyed or undyed, finished or unfinished” should be “put upon any vessel or laden upon any horse or cart with intent to export to any place whatever.” The effect of this measure upon the hat industry was almost ruinous. A few years later a similar blow was given to the iron industry. By an act of 1750, pig and bar iron from the colonies were given free entry to England to encourage the production of the raw material; but at the same time the law provided that “no mill or other engine for slitting or rolling of iron, no plating forge to work with a tilt hammer, and no furnace for making steel” should be built in the colonies. As for those already built, they were declared public nuisances and ordered closed. Thus three important economic interests of the colonists, the woolen, hat, and iron industries, were laid under the ban.

The Trade Laws. – The third group of restrictive measures passed by the British Parliament related to the sale of colonial produce. An act of 1663 required the colonies to export certain articles to Great Britain or to her dominions alone; while sugar, tobacco, and ginger consigned to the continent of Europe had to pass through a British port paying custom duties and through a British merchant’s hands paying the usual commission. At first tobacco was the only one of the “enumerated articles” which seriously concerned the American colonies, the rest coming mainly from the British West Indies. In the course of time, however, other commodities were added to the list of enumerated articles, until by 1764 it embraced rice, naval stores, copper, furs, hides, iron, lumber, and pearl ashes. This was not all. The colonies were compelled to bring their European purchases back through English ports, paying duties to the government and commissions to merchants again.