In this chapter I seek to critique the Eurocentrism of mainstream ‘regulatory theory’ by restoring the lost theme of Eastern agency to the study of international political economy (IPE). This is undertaken in the context of two main empirical areas – globalisation and international economic systems change. While globalisation is now a major topic on the IPE research agenda, the study of international economic systems change has yet to be considered. In the Introduction we presented one rationale that justifies the topic's inclusion in IPE – namely that it enables us to problematise the present international economic order by revealing the ‘small actors’ that played a formative role in its creation. But a second rationale for its inclusion lies in the point that studies of globalisation often implicitly presuppose the prior importance of the European transition from feudalism to capitalism. That is, globalisation is thought to be the expression of the ‘triumph of the West’. Accordingly, the two processes are conventionally understood to be fundamentally entwined. But the conventional way of thinking about these two entwined processes reflects a Eurocentric predisposition to the study of the world economy insofar as the agency of the progressive and pioneering West is thought to provide the vital link. I argue that the two processes are indeed entwined but that the link between them is provided by the role performed by progressive, pioneering Eastern capitalist agents.