ABSTRACT
Before the 1870s no industrial revolution occurred outside Western society. The spread of industrialization within western Europe, although by no means automatic, followed from a host of shared economic, cultural, and political features as well as frequent and familiar contacts. 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. One industrial initiative in India developed around Calcutta, where British colonial rule had centered since the East India Company founded the city in 1690. Direct contact with industrial organization and technology formed a significant facet of world history during the middle decades of the nineteenth century, but it was overshadowed by a more general reorientation in international economic relationships as the West began to display its industrial muscle. Industrialization did have some role in a potentially positive development in nineteenth-century labor history.
