Complete the account of the Second Industrial Revolution.

The new leading sectors were steel, chemicals, electricity and oil, and they required large capital and trained scientists rather than ingenious artisans. Germany and the United States overtook Britain in these industries. Firms concentrated into cartels and trusts, often tied closely to investment banks.

The shift in what an industry requires is what redistributes leadership. Britain’s advantage lay in accumulated craft skill and early machinery; the new sectors rewarded laboratories, technical education and banks willing to fund long projects, all of which Germany had built deliberately in the previous thirty years.