Abstract
The broadening of the world-system, which involves the geographic expansion into previously external areas and integration of new economies into its network of economic relationships, is represented in world-system scholarship by two competing views. On the one hand, Wallerstein and his associates treat incorporation as being specifically contingent on the routine and systematic economic exchange for durable goods produced in the previously external area to the benefit of the core. In contrast, Hall and Chase-Dunn contend that incorporation is a synchronous process that takes different forms depending onthe relative locations within the hierarchical world-economy of both the previously external areas and the incorporating area. Using the sixteenth-century North American Southeast as an episode of incorporation, this study examines the contact relationship between early European explorers and the indigenous groups in the formerly external area. My goal is to illuminate more fully how contact may permanently alter the social organization and relations within the region and, consequently, the form taken by subsequent integration into the world-system.
Highlights
The broadening of the world-system, which involves the geographic expansion into previously external areas and integration of new economies into its network of economic relationships, is represented in world-system scholarship by two competing views
I focus on those aspects of world-system expansion involved in its intrusion into new areas—the “broadening” of the world-economy—and the point at which we can reasonably say that the formerly external areas had been incorporated into the world-economy
The findings suggest that during the sixteenth century the area contributed resources to the world-economy—most often in the form of relations, not necessarily formalized, supplying
Summary
It can be argued that this overlooks the impact of contact on social relations within that area, which I contend are important to any understanding of incorporation This is the case since intra- and inter-class relations, institutional arrangements, and relations both internal to the newly incorporated area and external with agents of capitalism in the core zones of the world-economy set the context within which subsequent local changes occur (Hopkins and Wallerstein 1987). Comprising a network of relatively autonomous social groups or cultures, in the centuries immediately before and concurrent with European contact, the “core” of the Mississippian System was centered in the American Bottom near present-day Cahokia, Illinois It encompassed most of the southeastern region of North America and occupied much of the region encompassing the Mississippi, Ohio, and Tennessee river valleys. Basing my analysis on an extensive critical examination of published historical and archaeological research, I explore these unique political and economic structures that were in place prior to contact and how they may have influenced and were influenced by the incorporation of the region and its people into the world-system
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