How much did the availability of resources aid industrialization?

Answer 1

1. The whole point of industrialization to make massive investment in capital (machinery, etc.) so as to reduce unit costs and so make a profit on large production quantities.

That means that raw materials have to be available in quantity and that transportation costs have to be low.

2. One reason industrialization started in England was that England had coal and it had canals.

But once the oil fields of the Middle East were developed, Japan was able to become industrialized with no Natural Resources of its won. Transportation had become cheap enough that it could afford to import its raw materials from abroad: iron ore and coal from the U.S., oil from the Middle East, etc.