Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Preface -- INTRODUCTION -- The importance, role and function of the state: The cases of Great Britain and China -- HISTORIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION: TRADITIONAL VIEWS AND ALTERNATIVE PERSPECTIVES -- The persistence of the traditional view: Britain as an...

"In this book Peer Vries is the first scholar to provide an extensive test of the claim that industrialization in East Asia, in particular in Japan between the Meiji Restoration and World War Two, would have been much more labour intensive than industrialization in the West. He does this by...

Large-scale comparative economic history of westernmost and easternmost Eurasia is of importance for the understanding of global history. The book provides a description of material life in North-western Europe and East Asia, for the period from the late fifteenth to the late nineteenth...