I heard an interesting comparison in history class today.
In Medieval Europe a lot of the wealth was with the king, under feudalism the peasants would pay their king for protection and the king was in charge of basically everything in order for the peasants to be safe.
Then came the Turks stopping land trade with Asia and the prices for spices increasing drastically, which at that time was probably equal in importance to Medieval Europeans as is Chinese goods today. This lead to the age of exploration and Europeans developing the ships to do sea based trade. This was a lot safer, faster and considerably cheaper. Combined with the influx of cheaper spices, North American goods also began to take off in Europe, sugar and tobacco primarily. We like to think furs was important because for centuries that's all our economy was, but no not really.
This influx of cheap, exotic and foreign goods made European products really uncompetitive at the time. Unemployment was huge as there were simply no more jobs, it is said that it was at this time that Western culture shifted towards the "women in the kitchen only" idea as men needed jobs. Before this women were just as important in society. The slaved based labour overseas was incredibly competitive, creating a massive wealth gap. This made merchants who traded overseas many times richer than kings.
This shift happened around the 1600s, about 200 years before the industrial revolution. In the industrial revolution, the unemployment rate dropped incredibly quickly as economies began trading goods their own goods again. The infrastructure to make the globalized economy we have today simply wasn't there 200 years ago and the best option was local industries.
Then came the current globalized economy we have today. Although the richest people in the world aren't merchants, as part of the globalized economy we have basically all money traded is overseas just as it was when foreign goods were incredibly competitive against the European goods in Europe in the 1600s.
I wonder what kind of revolution will more than likely bring all these jobs back. There will likely be something within our lifetimes.