An L-embedded Banach spaace is a Banach space which is complemented in its bidual such that the norm is additive between the two complementary parts. On such spaces we define a topology, called an abstract measure topology, which by known results coincides with the usual measure topology on preduals of finite von Neumann algebras (like $L_1([0,1])$). Though not numerous, the known properties of this topology suffice to generalize several results on subspaces of $L_1([0,1])$ to subspaces of arbitrary L-embedded spaces.