The years economic historians lost: Japan, 1850–1890

Abstract

Summary The early history of Japan's industrialisation process clearly proves that it is necessary to attach more importance to technological development and labour organisation as preconditions for economic development, especially so as in contrast to the contribution of capital investment (as stated in the theory of previous accumulation). Given the crucial role of reverberatory furnaces as a harbinger of a new kind of factory in Japan, and the arsenals as the conveyors of new technology, we have to wonder why these developments are generally neglected by economic historians. Japanese historians, having the British industrial revolution in the back of their minds, consider Japan's early textile industry to be the starting point of Japan's economic advance, thus neglecting a point of major interest in Japan's industrialisation. Therefore, their discussion of the industrial revolution is not based on facts, but is reduced to an ideological question. British industrialisation serves as the mode par excelle...