Trading Locomotives

"In Trading Locomotives, Naofumi Nakamura examines the development of Japanese railway technology and management from a global perspective. The proliferation of railways around the world was integral to the emergence of a global market economy at the turn of the twentieth century, and the railways in Japan played an essential part in that story. Nakamura investigates steam locomotive manufacturing and distribution in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, focusing on how this industry came to Japan and then became a major domestic sector. Arguing that the industrial revolution was the first modern global economy, the book explores how international momentum and competition enabled the development of the Japanese railway economy during this era. Drawing on an extensive array of archival materials from Japan, the United States, and the UK, Trading Locomotives sheds new light on the global nature of the industrial revolution in Japan, as well as in the rest of the world"-- Provided by publisher.