SCHOLARLY PRECURSOR
EMERGED BETWEEN
1945-1970
The world-system analysis
arose during 1970 authored by
Immanuel Wallerstein.
Four intellectual antecedents
emerged between 1945 and
1970 as promulgating the rise
of world- system theory:
1. The study of Latin American history, contemporary
politics, and foreign relations, from which arose the
conceptualizations of core/periphery and dependency
theory
- The effort of the Latin American scholars had been made to
understand the economic and social structures of their region and
its relationship to the United States.
- “ Poor Mexico. So far from God and so close to the United
States.” – Porfirio Diaz
- Emphasizing informal imperialism, dependency theory focuses
on the subjugation by core nations .
- To continue the economic development independency of the
core powers, in 1940 it created the International Monetary Fund.
2. The Marxian idea of an
“Asiatic mode of production”
- The “Asiatic mode of production” stresses the
role of large, bureaucratic, and autocratic empires
in the world-system.
For example, during the Cold War, China
regulated its economy to combat the capitalist
world-system.
3. The historical debate about
the transition from feudalism to
capitalism
- Contribution to world-system theory was the debate on
the timing and nature of the transition from feudalism to
capitalism.
Did internal factors within individual nations, such as
consolidation of political power under a strong central
government, or external factors, such as the expansion
of trade, take precedence in the emergence of
capitalism?
4. The scholarship of Fernand Braudel
and the Annales School of
historiography.
- Wallerstein pointed to the scholarship of French historian Fernand Braudel
(1902-1985) and the Annales School of scholars that he inspired.
- The Annales School emphasized total history.
- Rejecting disciplinary constraints, entire history sought to capture the spirit of
particular historical ages.
Braudel’s work introduced two ideas that influenced Wallerstein’s theory:
1. Braudel’s multidisciplinary approach to the interaction of nations provided a
method for understanding history.
2. Wallerstein’s theory was influenced by the Annales school’s notion of longue
duree (the long duration), which maintained that historical trends must be
studied over long periods.
INCORPORATION OF THE
ENTIRE WORLD
- The world economy to the late fifteenth and early
sixteenth centuries, as dated by Wallerstein timeline, the
decline of feudalism and the rise of capitalism has
become part of a longstanding historiographical debate.
- The subtitle of Wallerstein’s first volume on the
development of the modern world-system is significant.
- Colonialism is one form of interstate relationship within
the capitalist world-system. Colonialism emerged as a
political method of incorporation of external areas.
THE TRIANGULAR TRADE
ROUTES REASON FOR
COLONIALISM
- Colonies also served as way stations for commerce on the trade
routes that linked the world-system and as bases to protect the
trade routes or disrupt the commerce of rival core powers.
- Incorporation into the world-system induced changes in the
economic, and even cultural, patterns of the peripheral and
colonial areas.
- Colonialism took several forms between the sixteenth and the
twentieth century’s, ranging from settler colonies to political
control by a small group of core citizens over a large native
population.
- Competition between core powers to consolidate areas external
to the world-system was the catalyst to colonialism.
- As labor-intensive agricultural products became more important,
the transport and trade of a labor force became an increasingly
vital factor in the world-system and a source of rivalry between
core powers.
-Struggles between core powers, and their attempts to maintain a
balance of power without anyone power achieving hegemony,
resulted in wars on the European continent.
-By the middle of the eighteenth century, policymakers in the
major European core nations– England, France, Spain, and the
Netherlands– realized that conflicts in the peripheral colonial
areas were as important toward maintaining the balance of power
within the world-system as wars on the continent.
- Demonstrating the linkage between private business and government in the
world-system, three actors participated in the colonization of India: the British
East India Company, the British government, and individual traders.
-Within world-system analysis, colonies are not passive participants.
- In virtually every colony, anti-systematic forces disputed colonial status.
- By the late nineteenth century, anticolonial rebellions were occurring
worldwide, and in the twentieth century, core nations realized that the costs of
colonialism outweighed the advantages.
- Ultimately, core nations found new methods of controlling the economies of
the newly independent nations in the periphery and semi-periphery.
THAT’S ALL.
THANK YOU!