ABSTRACT
The international division of labour which grew up as a result of European industrialization appeared to contemporaries in the nineteenth century to be part of the natural order of things. The forms of industrialization have been spreading to a variety of countries somewhat euphemistically described as 'developing' or 'newly-industrializing'. The situation is obviously a complex one. Much of the industrialization which has been taking place in the non-Western world has not been a response to an expanding internal market. The industrialization first of Britain and then of the other advanced countries of Western Europe and North America in the nineteenth century would not have been possible without bringing into existence a world division of labour in which most other areas of the world were turned into sources of primary products. Classical economic theory provided powerful ideological support for the division of the world into manufacturing and primary-producing countries, through the elaboration of the law of comparative costs.
