The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor (W W Norton & Company; 1998)

INDUSTRIALIZING EUROPE, C. 1850
The density of the railway networks is the best physical marker of the location
and pattern of European industrial development. The earliest industrializers
were those nations and regions already experienced in manufacturing: Benelux,
northern and eastern France, Rhineland and Ruhr, and Protestant Switzerland.