Migration and Hegemony in the World-System

Abstract

From the beginning in the late Middle Ages in European wool trade to support financial needs of the Vatican, capitalism has operated as a regional system of production, trade, and finance. Capital and labor migration propelled the expansion of the system reaching beyond Europe, especially in the “long sixteenth century” of 1450–1640. In succession, the United Provinces, Britain, and the United States achieved dominance in the capitalist world-system in historical eras from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. Migration of capital and labor helped configure economic and political relations among core, peripheral, and semiperipheral regions of the growing world-system.