ABSTRACT
Before the 1870s no industrial revolution occurred outside Western society. Russia's contact with the West's industrial revolution before the 1870s offers an important case study that explains why many societies could not quickly follow the lead of nations like France or the United States in imitating Britain. Only eastern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa were largely untouched by any explicit industrial imitations until the late 1860s or beyond; they were too distant from European culture to venture a response more quickly. By the 1870s cotton cloth made in Indian factories began to replace British goods in Chinese markets. And a British entrepreneur set up some metal production in southern India. Latin American nations, newly independent after 1820, had strong historical ties with western Europe. Chinese industrial history has generated a huge scholarly literature in recent years because it has become increasingly clear that an industrial revolution could have occurred in China almost as readily as in the West.
