Labor-intensive Industrialization: A Comparative Historical Study

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This project attempted to deepen our understanding of Asia's industrialisation over the last hundred and fifty years in comparative historical perspective, by studying individual cases of Japan, China, India and other Asian countries, by comparing them with European. experiences, and by conceptualising a general pattern. The: main thrust of the historical, argument is, that Asia's industrialisation generally followed a labour-intensive path, that is, it attempted to introduce Western technology and organizations, not by directly transferring them but by replacing capital with labour whenever possible, because the factor endowments conditions in Asia favoured the maximum use of labour of a cheap but good quality.Reflecting this conceptualisation, some European cases were re-examined to argue that indeed they too had the tendency for a labour-intensive path, especially, compared with the American experience in the late nineteenth and the twentieth.: centuries where abundant capital and resources were mobilised and labour-saving technology was sought.