A founding premise of the ILO was that the failure of any one country to adopt 'accepted international minimum standards' was an obstacle to the promotion of such standards in all other countries. As an 'avant-garde of global governance', the ILO helped to shape a moral discourse and a vision of global order to be administered from Europe. It aimed to stabilise the colonies and normalise wage labour through the extension of minimum standards of welfare and labour regulation.

Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, loc. 241