ABSTRACT
Three major developments defined the second phase of the industrial revolution in world history from the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth: industrialization outside the West, redefinition of the West’s own industrial economy, and growing involvement of nonindustrial parts of the world, along with an overall intensification of international impact. Japan and Russia also shared some very general characteristics that differentiated them from most other societies outside the West in the late nineteenth century. Neither was a colony, and neither had an economy that had become dominated by Western-directed commercial patterns. Russia and Japan knew from experience the salutary results of well-planned imitation of other societies. Russia had been selectively learning from the West for several centuries and even before that had borrowed from the Byzantine Empire. Japan had gained from earlier imitation of China. The second industrial period lasted until after World War II. It cut across a host of significant events, including the world wars and the depression.
