Wallerstein, World Systems Analysis, and Early Modern European History

Abstract

TEXTS SUCH AS GLOBAL RIFT by L. S. Stavrianos or Daniel Chirot's Social Change in the Twentieth Century have acquainted many teachers of with the terminology, concepts and interpretations of worldsystems analysis, particularly as elaborated by Immanuel Wallerstein. A prolific writer and forceful polemicist on a wide range of topics from contemporary Africa to social theory, Wallerstein is best known for The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century (New York, 1974) and The Modern World-System II: Mercantilism and the Consolidation of the European World-Economy, 1600-1750 (New York, 1980), the first two volumes of a projected four-volume reinterpretation of post-medieval world history.1 Both volumes of The Modern World-System have been extensively discussed in this country and abroad and, as a glance at any recent issue of the Arts and Humanities Citation Index reveals, they continue to be referred to repeatedly. Reviews in sociological journals have acclaimed their author's unparalleled boldness of vision to raise all the important issues and his theoretical ambitions, while so eminent a scholar as Charles Tilly has praised Wallerstein's powerful contribution to sociological practice, notably his role in restoring time and history to the research agenda.2 In similar terms to their sociologist colleagues, and