This volume calls for a major rethinking of our understanding of industrialization for global history, by bringing the East Asian experience of labour-intensive' industrialization into focus and, thereby, reinterpreting both the western experience of capital-intensive' industrialization and the equally distinctive experiences of countries in other regions of Asia and in Africa and Latin America. We argue that the absorption of labour into labour-intensive' industries, both traditional and modern, and the improvement of the quality of labour formed a central mechanism of global diffusion of...