2


               Was There a Precapitalist
                     World-System?

                    Jane Schneider*



In his book, The Modern World-System, Immanuel
Wallerstein applies to Western Europe a theory
of social change that other scholars have been
developing to analyze the growth patterns of
Third World countries (e.g., Amin 1974; Baran
1957; Emmanuel 1972; Frank 1967).  This theo-
ry, rooted in global political economy, or
geo-political economy, contrasts markedly with
the unilineal models of social change that
dominated social science until recently. 
Unlike a unilineal model, which posits inexo-
rable and orthogenetic progressions from
simple to complex, agrarian to industrial
organization, and unlike orthodox Marxism,
too, the new theory explains change in terms
of forces which originate outside of any
particular local region or nation, in the
dynamics of world economic organization.  The
unit of analysis is no longer the evolving
regional or national society in transition
from a traditional to a modern form but a
world economy, in which a few highly central-
ized core groups mobilize energy resources
from a vast peripheral domain.
   Wallerstein makes an important contribution
to the refinement of global political economy
by focusing attention on two interrelated
processes that __________________________
* Reprinted with permission from Peasant
Studies Vol. VI, No. 1, 
  January, 1977, pp. 20-29.
derive from core-area energy mobilization and
that may be considered critical sources of
change.  The first process involves the defen-
sive and competitive strategies that interest
groups peripheral to a core-area generate when
they are directly, or even indirectly, affect-
ed by its expansion.  Peripheral groups that
are not well located from the standpoint of
geography and environment may submit to, and
even adapt to, external pressure.  Groups that
are more propitiously located, however, defend
against penetration to the point where under
some rather special conditions a defensive
strategy becomes an offensive one and a new
core area evolves.  Although, as Wallerstein
emphasizes, the enormous gaps in wealth and
power between core and peripheral populations
remain fixed for long periods of time, the
deprivation produced by these gaps and the
energy drainage that sustains them inevitably
lead to one or another form of resistance. 
This, and the counter-resistance in which core
populations may subsequently invest, have
obvious implications for institutional, cul-
tural, and economic change within the regions
or nations involved.
   The second process that is inherent in
world economic organization and underlies
social change is the creation and maintenance
of interdependent relationships between vari-
ous national and regional entities.  The
concept, "regional differentiation," is the
key to understanding this process, according
to which particular populations come to play
particular roles, their economic, political,
and cultural institutions changing to meet the
demands of specialization.  Wallerstein pro-
vides a vocabulary with which to describe this
process.  He suggests that the "initial eligi-
bility" for a particular role is often decided
by an "accidental edge" related to past histo-
ry and current environmental resources and
geography.  Once the slight edge is estab-
lished, the operations of the world economy
"accentuate the differences, institutionalize
them and make them impossible to surmount over
the short run" (1974a: 403).  In this way,
"the slight edge is converted into a large
disparity..." (1974: 98).  He offers six-
teenth-century Poland as an example, relating
changes in that country's economic (especially
labor) organization, state institutions, and
religion to its assumption of the specialized
role of breadbasket for North Atlantic Europe.
   To summarize, a global theory of social
change hinges on two overlapping processes --
one of competition between various geographi-
cally localized populations of unequal power;
the other of differentiation, division of
labor, and interdependence among these same
units.  Both processes have an ecological
dimension since geography and environmental
resources influence the assumption of particu-
lar specializations, as well as the ability to
resist demands posed by external dominants. 
Both are also historical in that past roles or
past resistance leave their imprint on a
population's resources and institutional
structure, thereby influencing its contempo-
rary ability to repel or adapt to new roles. 
Wallerstein's comparison of Poland with Russia
-- the high point of the book -- shows how the
two processes intersect.  By virtue of its
accidental edge, Russia resisted incorporation
into the European-dominated world economy of
the sixteenth century.  Unlike Poland, it thus
remained internally diversified and capable of
establishing its own peripheral domain (1974:
303-324).
   From the point of view of social science,
Wallerstein's most significant contribution is
the suggestion that processes of interaction
and unequal exchange might explain events not
only in Third World areas transformed by
European hegemony in the nineteenth and twen-
tieth centuries, but in earlier periods within
Europe itself.  This establishes a unity of
theory between Western and non-Western peo-
ples, the absence of which has long been
problematic in unilineal models of change
whose ethnocentricisms are consistent with
their inability to account for the disparity
between Europe's precocious advances and other
peoples' "lag."  It will be the point of this
essay, however, that The Modern World-System
suffers from too narrow an application of its
own theory.  For, although Wallerstein ad-
mires Owen Lattimore's description of the
differentiation process according to which
ancient Chinese civilization "gave birth to
barbarism," (quoted in Wallerstein, 1974: 98),
he does not view the precapitalist world as
systematically integrated through the opera-
tions of world economic forces.  Because most
of the book is dedicated to the rise of North
Atlantic Europe as the preeminent core area of
the world economy -- an event Wallerstein
equates with the emergence of the capitalist
world-system -- it unfortunately does not
benefit from the clarity of argument and
coherence of analysis that distinguish his
comparison of Poland with Russia.
   Wallerstein has assembled a staggering
quantity and diversity of data pertinent to
the development of modern capitalism.  He has
analyzed processes of core-area expansion and
regional differentiation that unfolded in the
wake of this event.  His account of differen-
tiation usefully extends to a comparison of
state formation in core and peripheral areas,
while his discussion of forms of labor mobili-
zation in these respective areas is complex,
original, and stimulating.  It is when they
are measured against such examples of a global
theory at work that the lists of factors which
he has drawn up to account for various precap-
italist events are theoretically unsatisfying,
sometimes incomplete, and often confusing. 
One wants to know why, for example, his analy-
sis of the "rise of England" does not focus
attention on that nation's environmental
resources, or on its essentially peripheral
status in relation to other continental pow-
ers, in particular Northern Italy.  I will
return to these points later on.
   This essay attempts to demonstrate that
Wallerstein's reluctance to apply the con-
cepts, "core" and "periphery," to precapital-
ist transformations is a product of the way he
views the luxury trade.  Before the emergence
of the capitalist world-system (which I too
will identify, for the sake of convenience,
with the rise to core status of England and
Holland), most exchanges between distant
places involved the movement of luxuries -- of
exotic goods or "preciosities" which were very
high in value per unit of weight and therefore
relatively easy to transport.  For many au-
thorities, Wallerstein among them, the differ-
ence between luxuries and bulk goods such as
food or timber goes beyond their transport-
ability.  They are implicitly categorized as
opposites: preciosities versus essentials or
utilities.  I suggest that this dichotomy is a
false one that obscures the systemic proper-
ties of the luxury trade.  In the following
pages, I will first outline Wallerstein's
argument that long distance trade in exotic
goods was of little relevance to intra-Europe-
an change.  I will then develop an alternative
interpretation according to which Europe as a
whole, and England in particular, were reduced
to peripheral areas by this trade.  I hope
that the alternative interpretation will
prepare the way for future analyses of precap-
italist events within a theoretical framework
consistent with Wallerstein's analysis of
Russia and Poland.
   According to Wallerstein, the capitalist
world-system differs from all previous imperi-
ums, which he describes as world-empires.  He
argues for this distinction on the grounds
that before capitalism, the political and
economic boundaries of empires coincided,
administrative control being extended through
tributary relations to the entire area from
which energy resources were mobilized.  In
contrast, the modern world-system is a world-
economy in which political integration is
intermittent.  At its center are strong, well-
knit and relatively homogeneous nation states,
whose spheres of political control have not
been isomorphic with their economic hegemony. 
Rulers of these states manifest a great deal
more respect for mercantile and manufacturing
interests than did the despots of precapital-
ist states.  In addition they organize a
completely different kind of buffer between
the imperial center and the localized popula-
tions on whose energy this center draws.  Wal-
lerstein's elaboration of the concept "semipe-
riphery" establishes a mutually exclusive set
of dynamics for precapitalist and capitalist
empires, in which the former are stabilized
through the manipulation of middle sector
"cultural" or occupational groups, whereas the
latter depend for stability upon independent
political entities -- semiperipheral states --
that belong to neither the core nor the pe-
riphery (1974: 349-350; 1974a: 403-404).
   Consistent with these contrasts between
past and present, precapitalist and modern
empires, is Wallerstein's acceptance of the
view that the ancient empires of Near and Far
Eat were homeostatic and not dynamic (1974:
84-85).  For example, although he appreciates
that in the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries,
China and Europe had roughly comparable popu-
lations, and although he shares with Joseph
Needham a respect for Chinese technological
achievement, he nevertheless emphasizes Chin-
a's opposition to foreign commerce and the
Confucian suppression of early Ming explora-
tion and maritime activity.  China's overall
commitment, he suggests, was to internal
rather than external expansion and to the
development of whatever surplus it had into
defensive installations against Central Asian
"barbarians" on the northern and western
frontiers.  China blanketed, rather than
released, the forces of expansion (1974: 53-
63).
   Wallerstein's assessment of China and, by
implication, of other precapitalist empires
suggests why these polities do not enter
theoretically into his analysis of the capi-
talist transformation in Europe.  Since, in
the Middle Ages, Europe was tributary to none
of them, none can be said to have interacted
with Europe in ways that were relevant to
systemic social change.  Chapter one of The
Modern World-System mentions that precapital-
ist Europe was a "very marginal area in eco-
nomic terms," (1974: 17) but marginality is a
concept distinct from periphery.  In contrast
to peripheral areas, marginal ones are disen-
gaged from processes of struggle and competi-
tion, differentiation, and specialization in
relation to much older and more developed
centers of civilization.
   Perhaps the most explicit statement of this
disengagement is Wallerstein's evaluation of
the significance of long distance trade, for
although Europeans did not deliver tribute to
the metropolises of world empires, they were
nevertheless in touch with them through trade. 
Wallerstein does not argue that this trade was
ephemeral.  He recognizes that it provided
employment for thousands of people, profits
for middlemen, and revenues for states.  In
addition it contributed to the internal strat-
ification of entire populations, since exotic
goods imported from afar could be utilized in
the demarcation and maintenance of status
barriers (1974: 306-307).  But he does not
think that these effects of long distance
trade induced European development, either as
stimuli or as obstacles to be overcome.  On
the contrary, as if to underscore the irrele-
vance of the luxury trade for change, he
applies to Asia, Africa, and the Near East the
concept "external arena," because he feels
that these areas bore no systemic relationship
to Europe until the eighteenth or nineteenth
centuries, and then on terms defined by Euro-
peans.
   The distinction between periphery and
external arena rests upon the conceptual
separation of essential from luxury exchanges.

   This is to be sure a distinction rooted
   in the social perceptions of the actors
   and hence in both their social organiza-
   tion and their culture.  These percep-
   tions can change.  But the distinction
   is crucial if we are not to fall into
   the trap of identifying every exchange-
   activity as evidence of the existence of
   a system (1974a: 397-398).

   According to Wallerstein, trade in precios-
ities, unlike trade in essentials, is non-
systemic.  Each party "exports to the other
what is in its system socially defined as
worth little, and gets what is socially de-
fined as worth much."  Both partners to the
exchange reap rewards simultaneously.  Dis-
tinct from the profits that are made under
capitalism, these rewards are mere "wind-
falls."  One partner does not gain at the
expense of the other (1974a: 398).  Precapita-
list Europe traded a number of preciosities
with Asia; in particular, it exported precious
metals to pay for imported pepper, spices, and
silk.  Before the rise of capitalism, however,
primitive conditions in transportation re-
stricted the movement of bulk goods such as
food.  Because, by Wallerstein's definition,
only the latter type of exchange is systemic,
precapitalist trade was a secondary factor,
one among many, and not critical to social
change (1974: 20-21).
   How then does Wallerstein account for the
capitalist transformation?  In his view this
event was propelled by the need to overcome
the "crisis of feudalism" -- the wars and
plagues, economic collapse, and class conflict
that in the fourteenth century reduced the
population of Europe by a third to a half.  He
attributes the crisis to a conjuncture of
prior over-expansion, cyclical economic down-
turns, and (possibly) changing climate.  Of
these the most important was prior over-expan-
sion.  Between 1150 and 1300, demographic and
economic growth exceeded environmental capaci-
ty, given technologies available at the time. 
Wallerstein considers but rejects Sweezy's
hypothesis that long distance trade stimulated
this growth.  Perhaps it was one factor, but
because it involved primarily luxuries, it was
less important than "food and handicraft
production," the multiplication of which
appears to have been spontaneous:

   ...the scale of this economic activity
   was slowly expanding, and the various
   economic nuclei expanded therewith.  New
   frontier lands were cultivated.  New
   towns were founded.  Population grew. 
   The Crusades provided some of the advan-
   tages of colonial plunder.  And then
   sometime in the fourteenth century, this
   expansion ceased.  The cultivated areas
   retracted.  Population declined (1974:
   21).

This statement suggests that an endogenous set
of forces was at work, among them spontaneous
population growth -- the motor force in many
applications of unilineal models of change
(see Cowgill 1975).
   The crisis of feudalism found its resolu-
tion in the creation of the capitalist world-
system, two of whose central features we have
already encountered: the regional divergence
of eastern Europe, which under a re-gime of
highly coerced agricultural labor began to
grow wheat for export to the North Atlantic
core, and the formation of strong states in
this core.  The first feature of the system to
manifest itself, a pre-condition for other
developments, was, however, the "incredible
geographical expansion" that began with the
Portuguese discovery voyages in the late
fifteenth century.  Wallerstein has difficulty
accounting for these voyages.  The textbook
explanation that Portuguese navigators and
adventurers sought spices and gold satisfies
him only in part, for these are preciosities
and of secondary importance to an explanation
of change.  Yet the "motivations" of Portugal
are worth puzzling over, for they were motiva-
tions of Europe too.  Because Portuguese
expansion followed the demographic catastrophe
of the fourteenth century, it could hardly
have resulted from land shortage or over-
population.  Nevertheless Wallerstein suggests
that expansion may have been motivated by a
search for food.  Europe needed surplus food
to support increased development and urbaniza-
tion (1974: 41-42).
   Europe's search for food is well documented
in Wallerstein's account of the transformation
of eastern Europe into a breadbasket (although
except for a footnote on page 218 and a brief
reference on page 221 he virtually ignores
southern Italy and Sicily, which were func-
tionally specialized to produce surplus wheat
as early as Roman times).  His documentation
of a food quest by Portugal is less convinc-
ing.  Committed to the proposition that "in
the long run, staples account for more of
men's economic thrusts than luxuries," (1974:
42) he wants to find staples in the cargoes of
Portuguese ships.  There was indeed a modest
quantity of cereals, imported from the Atlan-
tic islands off the Portuguese coast, but this
represented only a minor segment of the total
trade and only one component of the island
trade as well.  Sugar imports were more sub-
stantial, but was sugar essential?  Waller-
stein argues that it provided calories (1974:
43), but so did honey which was widely avail-
able in Europe.  In the Renaissance courts of
Italy the fascination of sugar was such that
it was eaten with virtually anything and
fashioned into decorative sculptures (Root
1971: 36-40; Tannahill 1973: 223).  Sugar went
to make rum and later chocolate, which Waller-
stein characterizes as "highly appreciated"
drinks, but by what criteria were they staple
foods?  He also mentions dyestuffs and wine
which other authorities would similarly clas-
sify as luxuries (1974: 43).
   It seems to me that dyestuffs and wine,
sugar and rum, should not be separated from
the textbook explanation for Portuguese (and
hence European) geographical expansion.  The
explorers were searching for luxury goods,
especially spices and precious metals, the
latter to exchange for more luxuries from the
Orient (1974: 39-41).  If wine was a useful
beverage, then pepper was a useful spice, yet
both also indulged the fancies of a status
conscious aristocracy.  Are we to conclude
then that the capitalist transformation began
with a caprice?  Wallerstein is right to avoid
so absurd a position.  The way around the
dilemma, however, is to discover the relation-
ship between luxuries and essentials, not to
make sugar and wine into staple foods.
   In a recent article on long distance trade,
Robert M. Adams, the archaeologist, argues
that even in antiquity trade was a "formidable
socioeconomic force...in spite of its being
confined largely to commodities of very high
value in relation to weight and bulk due to
the high transport costs, and in spite of its
directly involving only a small part of the
population" (1974: 247).  Rejecting the as-
sumption that change in precapitalist society
was an endogenous process that moved popula-
tions irreversibly from simple to complex
levels of integration, he proposes that we
assume for the past as well as the present a
model in which more complex societies "domi-
nate weaker neighbors, coalesce, experience
predation, develop and break off patterns of
symbiosis and all in dizzyingly abrupt
shifts."  The need to adapt to such shifts is
"the most single overwhelming selective pres-
sure to which societies are exposed" (1974:
249; see also Wolf 1967).  Marshalling evi-
dence from a number of case studies, some
ethnographic and others archaeological, Adams
argues that there is a close connection be-
tween predation and trade.  On the surface
benign, the luxury trade could induce massive
alterations in technology, leadership, class
structure, and ideology within trading popula-
tions and in "relay" populations on the tran-
sit routes.  In addition to promoting symbio-
sis, trade was also "partly aggressive, and
sometimes dangerously competitive" -- a turbu-
lent process (1974: 249).
   Adams' argument challenges the idea that
luxuries served little purpose other than to
satisfy the whims and desires of aristocrats
and enable them to maintain distance from
status inferiors.  This idea is illustrated by
Wallerstein's remark that European aristocrats
"made (spices) into aphrodisiacs, as though
[they] could not make love otherwise," (1974:
41) which implies that the consumption pat-
terns of the very rich were, if not laughable,
then harmful only to themselves.  Following
Malinowski and Mauss on the power of the gift,
a case can be made that luxury goods served
more fundamental ends.  The relationship of
trade to social stratification was not just a
matter of an elevated group distinguishing
itself through the careful application of
sumptuary laws and a monopoly on symbols of
status; it further involved the direct and
self-conscious manipulation of various semi-
peripheral and middle level groups through
patronage, bestowals, and the calculated
distribution of exotic and valued goods.
   A good analysis of the relationship between
gifts and power is Luigi Graziano's comprehen-
sive essay on clientelism (1975).  Suggesting
that the principle of the gift consists in
"the calculated and productive use of generos-
ity," Graziano argues that:

   One gives because in highly stratified
   societies an effective way to control
   conflict is to establish a network of
   personal obligations; one gives, at the
   same time, in order to crush clients and
   rivals with onerous obligations sanc-
   tioned by the personal submission of the
   defaulting debtor.  One gives, in summa-
   ry, because this is a rational means for
   accumulating power...(1975: 27).

Where there is a clear imbalance of power, but
juridical and coercive institutions are absent
or weakly articulated, gift-giving performs
the function of contract enforcement.  As
Graziano points out, the subordinate learns
that "the only way to continue enjoying the
protection and other resources monopolized by
the powerful is to loyally return benefits
received.  The restitution will consist of
personal services and, in order to compensate
for disparity in resources between patron and
client, in compliance to the former's will"
(1975: 25).
   Patron-client relations, established and
maintained through the exchange of gifts and
favors, contribute in different ways to the
mobilization of energy.  By virtue of the
obligations created by his bestowals, the
patron can often claim a portion of the sur-
plus labor of his dependents.  But patrons do
not simply lay claim to the energy resources
of their clients.  Their most significant
claims are levied against outsiders to this
paternalistic tie.  Often, in fact, the intent
in constructing a clientele is to defuse
organized opposition, class antagonism, and
class struggle (e.g., Blok 1969, 1974). 
Pitting some against others, gift-giving
promotes the co-optation of class enemies,
making the patron-client relationship a force-
ful political adjunct to energy capture.
   Clientelism also operates at the societal
level where it facilitates the mobilization of
energy resources through the creation and
maintenance of client states whose respective
economic contributions may be less significant
than their political loyalty.  Descriptive
accounts of the Chinese tributary system, for
example, attribute to such states the same
role Wallerstein assigns to semiperipheral
states under capitalism.  These accounts also
portray the fundamental contribution that
luxuries made to clientelism on this level. 
For centuries China wove a vast network of
tribute bearing kings and princes across its
northern, western, and southern frontiers and
garnered their submission through "imperial
compassion," including the bestowal of gifts. 
The emperor or his deputies gave presents to
envoys during their visits, upon their depar-
ture from the Chinese court, and through
ambassadorial missions to tributaries in their
own lands.  Gifts ranged from silver coins and
rolls of silk to Chinese princess brides for
rulers (Fairbank and Teng 1941; Wiens 1967).
   Many Western historians have commented on
the lavishness and generosity of Chinese
gifts, which often matched or surpassed the
value of the tribute delivered to the emperor
by the client state.  Indeed, tributary obli-
gations rarely constituted a significant
surplus, but were instead a token sampling of
unique local wares.  Wallerstein utilizes this
characteristic of the tribute system to sup-
port his distinction between precapitalist and
capitalist empires, noting that, under the
former, tribute was sometimes a "disguised
form of trade disadvantageous to the empire"
(1974: 60-61).  In a footnote he urges compar-
ison between "this self-defeating political
arrangement [and] the frank colonialism Portu-
gal and other European countries practiced on
the overseas barbarians" (1974: 61, n. 162).
   Yet, gift-bestowal was just an instrument
of Chinese foreign policy, the crux of which
was expansion.  Over the many centuries of its
existence, the Chinese Empire, like other
empires of the precapitalist world, mobilized
energy resources, displaced neolithic cultiva-
tors, captured metals and slaves, beyond as
well as within its frontiers.  The demographic
and territorial expansion of the Han Chinese,
who pushed back these frontiers, was in fact
phenomenal, and, although it was much more
gradual than the European expansion of a later
period, it may turn out to have been more
enduring.  For China, as for other great
empires of the precapitalist past, the tribu-
tary system made expansion possible.  Energy
was mobilized around as well as through it,
often with the blessing and outright assis-
tance of the client states, minimally with the
expectation that there would be allies to
provide support, including food and other
essentials, should the empire or its represen-
tatives be attacked.  Because the tribute
system was maintained through the distribution
of luxuries, these goods were also "essential"
-- not only in the narrow sense that, through
cultural definition of tastes, people became
addicted to them, but also in the broader
sense that imperialism necessitated "winning
distant people with kindness" as well as
hitting them over the head.  The same princi-
ple applies to foreign policy today.
   Precapitalist tribute systems at first
glance give the impression that reliance upon
luxury goods for the creation and maintenance
of allies was indiscriminate.  Anything a
potential ally might consider valuable or,
through court ceremonial and ritual, might be
influenced to consider valuable, could consti-
tute a gift capable of obligating him to the
donor.  In fact, however, the various precios-
ities that circulated in long distance trade
differed in the degree to which they could
readily be converted into other resources. 
The greater an object's perceived value over
both time and space, the greater was its
potential to bind allegiances, and thereby
promote energy capture.  Goods with high
durability, quality control in their produc-
tion, a widespread reputation for fineness and
integrity, and a high degree of natural scar-
city were -- with remarkable consistency --
among the most coveted valuables across much
of the Old World.  Of these, gold and silver,
first coined (in alloyed form) in the seventh
century B.C., led the list "not so much be-
cause they were money as because they were
treasured" (Neale 1976: 45, 51).
   Those who held gold and silver, whether
they ruled states, religious bodies, aristo-
cratic families, or whatever, could feel
confident of the stability of their hoards in
the future as well as the present, at home as
well as abroad.  As these magnates, especially
the rulers of states, harnessed bureaucrats
and soldiers to their service, they found them
unwilling to accept as pay anything but pre-
cious metals.  From a very early time, more-
over, the military capability of a state
depended not only on numbers and weapons, but
on having a storehouse of treasure to bribe
allies, ransom prisoners, purchase supplies,
pay indemnities, and so on (Grierson 1959). 
In Neale's words, "one cannot have a pig feast
with goat meat, and Charles II and Louis XIV
could not conduct a war" without gold and
silver (1976: 55).
   Wallerstein is aware that bullion provided
"a monetary base for circulation within Eu-
rope" (1974: 41), but does not fully appreci-
ate its significance for war and diplomacy. 
His classification of precious metals as
preciosities, and the distinction he makes
between these and essential goods, cancel out
the few passing references to this critical
function (e.g., 1974: 197).  As a consequence
he overlooks an old and fascinating, and
perhaps systemic, pattern in long distance
trade.  Since antiquity, expanding empires
have acquired precious metals and other highly
valued luxuries, not only by plunder and
piracy, but by exporting finished goods, above
all cloth.  Adams, for example, describes how
ancient Mesopotamia acquired lapis-lazuli,
pearls, rare woods, ivory, gold, and silver
from the "barbarian" interior of Anatolia. 
The major export to this backward area was
woolen cloth, so much that, in addition to the
roughly 50,000 sheep it raised, Mesopotamia
imported raw wool (1974: 246-47).  Similarly,
in the early Christian centuries, Indian
traders extracted precious metals and spices
from the evolving kingdoms of Southeast Asia,
whose divine right rulers were ceremonially
inducted into the Kshatriya caste by immigrant
Brahmin priests.  Committed to the intensifi-
cation of production within their respective
territories, these rulers imported status
goods, among them beads and cloth (Wheatley
1976).
   The theme of precious metals for cloth had
its counterpart in ancient China where the
imperial court periodically declared that
payments of all kinds should be made in silk
and porcelain, brocade and lacquerware, rather
than in bullion or coin (Fairbank 1969: 75;
Servoise 1966; Yang 1952).  Like India, China
was one of the great civilizations that over
the centuries stockpiled precious stones and
metals against an impressive outflow of fin-
ished textiles.  To borrow Braudel's imagery,
civilizations like these produced no metals
but drained them from the whole world (1973:
338-339).
   It should be no surprise, then, that Euro-
peans were historically preoccupied with the
outflow of silver and gold, (much of it ac-
quired through trade and plunder, some of it
from European mines), and that they too saw a
connection between this movement and the
movement of cloth.  In A.D. 14-37, Tiberius
prohibited wearing (imported) silk in Rome,
his regulation, according to Needham, closely
following a series of Chinese reforms (A.D. 9-
23) in which gold coins were called in to be
exchanged for bronze causing a "drain on world
gold circulation" (1954: 109).  Over the next
several centuries, rulers throughout Europe
similarly passed sumptuary laws in part to
stem the export of metals, restricting even
the textiles produced by their European neigh-
bors (e.g., Miller 1969: 218-20; Miskimin
1969: 149-150).  In addition to providing the
coinage these rulers needed to pay loyal
dependents and bureaucrats, treasure was the
"sinews of war" -- a point well illustrated by
the predicament of the late medieval Duke of
Burgundy who had difficulty ransoming his son
from the Turks because too many gold coins had
been drained off to England to purchase Eng-
lish cloth, which this Duke had unsuccessfully
tried to ban from his realm (Munro 1972: 53-
55).
   The familiar mercantilist doctrines of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries also
pointed to a connection between cloth and
gold.  Belaboring the dangers that were inher-
ent in the export of precious metals, the more
farsighted economists proposed that public
policy should bolster up textile industries,
cheapen labor and other factors of production,
and promote the export of manufactures instead
of bullion (e.g., Heckscher 1955: 188).
   Wallerstein's treatment of the secular, if
uneven, export of metals from Europe is con-
tradictory.  In addition to citing Andrew
Watson's reference to the "strong power of
India and China to attract precious metals
from other parts of the world" (quoted in
1974: 39-40), he suggests in a footnote that
readers consult the "remarkable collaborative
article" by Lopez, Miskimin, and Udovitch in
which "they argue very convincingly that the
years 1350-1500 see a steady outflow of bul-
lion from north-west Europe to Italy to the
Levant to India" (1974: 40, n. 85).  Yet
Wallerstein cannot explain why England and
France "complained bitterly" about this out-
flow, nor why Europeans passionately hoarded
bullion at the same time that they exported it
extensively to the East (1974: 329-330).  At
one point he calls attention to the distinc-
tion between "bullion as money" and "hoarded
bullion" or treasure (1974: 333); but else-
where simple formulae obscure the complex uses
of precious metals: "the bullion flowed east
to decorate the temples, palaces, and clothing
of Asian aristocratic classes and the jewels
and spices flowed west" (1974: 41) -- an
innocuous exchange of windfalls, irrelevant to
competition for energy among great powers.
   To the extent that, contrary to Waller-
stein, the flow of precious metals was not
benign, but was related, however indirectly,
to energy mobilization, it is possible to
hypothesize a precapitalist world-system, in
which core-areas accumulated precious metals
while exporting manufactures, whereas periphe-
ral areas gave up these metals (and often
slaves) against an inflow of finished goods. 
As in the modern world-system, most areas fit
neither of these categories but constituted
either external arenas, or semiperipheral
"layers within layers."
   Given the hypothesized system, precapita-
list Europe was not simply marginal to the
older, better established civilizations of the
Levant and Asia; it was peripheral to these
civilizations whose development it partially
supported through the export of metals and, in
the early Middle Ages, also of slaves (Verlin-
den 1955).  As such its trajectory of develop-
ment might fruitfully be compared with that of
other bullion-losing, textile-importing areas
such as Southeast Asia and West Africa, rather
than exclusively with energy-gaining China as
is often done.  Another parallel to explore is
that of the handful of twentieth-century
underdeveloped countries which, by accident of
geography and environmental resources, are
well enough situated to withdraw from external
pressure, successfully defend against subse-
quent penetration, substitute for imported
manufactures, and eventually export manufac-
tures in lieu of energy (Seers 1970).
   For Europe, the hypothesized conversion
from periphery to core took many centuries
during which serious reversals and a great
deal of internal competition occurred.  At
various points different regions held the
initiative in the conversion process, and as a
result, they functioned as minor core areas
within Europe itself.  Northern Italy, Flan-
ders, and (eventually) England are the prime
examples.  Yet the complexity which resulted
from the simultaneous expansion of several
incipient centers of development also had a
certain coherence if one accepts the existence
of a precapitalist world-system.  For that
system points to cloth manufacture as the
central element in the transition from a
dependent to a dominant relationship with the
Levant and Far East.  It suggests that there
were successive, cloth-centered, European
strategies to retreat from, then match, and
finally to undermine the textile-producing,
Oriental areas toward which bullion was mov-
ing.  The most successful strategies over the
long run, if not the short run, appear to have
been based on wool -- and for good reason. 
Until Europeans finally penetrated India,
which was not until the eighteenth century,
cotton was an Asian specialty and, as Pirenne
once wrote, to carry silk to an Oriental
monarch was "like carrying water to the river"
(1909: 310, n. 2).  When Marc Bloch, in Feudal
Society, referred to the "revolution which saw
our Western countries embarking on the econom-
ic conquest of the world by way of the East,"
he had in mind the explosion of export-orient-
ed woolen cloth manufacturing in towns and
cities all over the map of Europe (1961: 70).
   Textiles figure importantly in Waller-
stein's account of numerous precapitalist
events.  But they figure as factors among
other factors, rather than as central ele-
ments.  As such it is difficult to appreciate
the extent to which textile manufacturing, in
and of itself, contributed to the fundamental
processes of regional differentiation and
inter-regional competition prior to the capi-
talist breakthrough.  Wallerstein's treatment
of the rise of England illustrates this point. 
A presumably exhaustive presentation of fac-
tors assembled to account for this critical
juncture identifies textiles as "the hub
of...export trade," but it does not assess the
significance of England's abundant and rich
pastures for the competitiveness of its cloths
in foreign markets (1974: 228-235).  In the
context of analyzing the failure of Spain to
consolidate its empire, Wallerstein many pages
earlier alludes to the natural advantage of
English pastures (1974: 91); and an unrelated
footnote somewhat later quotes Bowden: "It was
England's fortune that she possessed a quasi-
monopoly of long-staple wool" (1974: 280, n.
268).  Yet the only factor of environmental
significance to figure as an "accidental edge"
in the actual analysis of England's rise is
the nation's unusual insularity.
   Regarding England's relationship to more
developed, continental European powers, Wal-
lerstein is also unfocused.  At one point he
describes this nation as industrially back-
ward, even in the mid-sixteenth century, and
as having been a virtual colony in the Middle
Ages (1974: 227).  Data pertinent to these
characterizations, however, are not brought to
bear on the argument, but are scattered throu-
ghout the book.  A summary in Chapter One of
the factors that produced the crisis of feu-
dalism mentions, almost in passing, that
"within Europe, there were at least two small-
er world-economies, a medium sized one based
on the city-states of northern Italy and a
smaller one based on the city-states (sic) of
Flanders and northern Germany" (1974: 36-37). 
Although he suggests that "most of Europe was
not directly involved in these networks,"
subsequent footnotes reveal that before the
mid-fourteenth century, the principle markets
for England's raw wool were the cloth indus-
tries of Italy (1974: 150, n. 73) and Flanders
(1974: 229, n. 21).
   Another footnote quotes Postan, who drew a
connection between the early fourteenth-centu-
ry "collapse of Italian finance...the breeding
of the new cloth industry (in England)," and
the Hundred Years War (1974: 28, n. 44). 
Wallerstein, however, does not pursue the
implications of this note, using the Hundred
Years War only as one of the factors that
intensified the crisis of feudalism by forcing
states to adopt war economies, and hence to
increase taxes (1974: 21, 28-29).  Nor does
his analysis bring out the subsequent phase of
Italian imperialism in England.  As the devel-
opment of the English woolen industry intensi-
fied competition for raw wool on the conti-
nent, north Italian cities increasingly spe-
cialized in the manufacture of silks, bro-
cades, and velvets, and in the transhipment of
Oriental luxuries acquired through long dis-
tance trade.  Wallerstein, borrowing Postan's
phrase, refers to the "precocious mercantil-
ism" of the rising English who, in the fif-
teenth century, squeezed out "alien merchants,
the Italians in particular..."  But this
reference, embedded in the analysis of the
rise of England and coming on page 229, is
detached from an explanation for anti-Italian
sentiment.  The explanation is implicit in the
footnote on page 40 (mentioned above) which
concerns the "steady outflow of bullion from
northwest Europe to Italy to the Levant to
India," an outflow that moved against Italian
and Oriental wares (Holmes 1960).
   In other words, The Modern World-System,
notwithstanding its contribution to elucidat-
ing a global economy, contains no sustained
discussion of the relationship between the
colonial pressure exerted over England by
Flanders and northern Italy, and England's
resistance to this pressure as manifested in
the expulsion of Italian financiers and mer-
chants, the development of an indigenous
textile industry, the enactment of endless
sumptuary laws, and the pursuit of war, just
as there is no concentrated assessment of the
environmental conditions that permitted this
relatively small but fortunate nation to raise
both sheep and armies at the same time.
   Wallerstein contributes significantly to
the refinement of a new theory of change by
providing concepts and illustrations that
clarify the two fundamental processes upon
which applications of the theory depend: the
processes of regional differentiation and
inter-regional dominance, resistance, competi-
tion.  In addition, by applying the theory to
Europe, his work pushes social science toward
an understanding of change in which Western
and non-Western, traditional and modern,
peoples are subject, if not to similar out-
comes, then at least to similar laws.  Overall
the book is supportive of a position, ex-
pressed well by William McNeill, that "surely
the assumption of uniformity in the range of
human behavior has more to recommend it than
any assertion of systematic difference between
civilized and uncivilized, rational and non-
rational, Western and non-Western modes of
conduct" (1974).  It appears, however, that
Wallerstein's analysis of England's transfor-
mation, as of many of the precapitalist events
he explores, departs from this position. 
Leaving out environmental variables of signif-
icance to the process of regional differentia-
tion, and failing to examine the full implica-
tions of inter-regional dominance, it does not
raise the question whether the rise of England
can be understood within the same intellectual
framework as the fall of Poland.
   This essay has suggested that, to discover
laws that apply to precapitalist as well as
capitalist social change, it is necessary to
view the luxury trade not merely as a stimulus
to production, or an adjunct to stratifica-
tion, but also as a series of long distance
exchanges of relevance to the capture of
energy.  Because before the capitalist trans-
formation, primitive means of transportation
restricted the flow of bulk goods, we are
inclined to think that energy was stagnant
too.  If, however, some luxuries, and in
particular gold and silver, were readily
convertible into energy resources across much
of the Old World, their movement constituted a
disguised transfer of essential goods.  The
movement of slaves (not discussed here) often
paralleled the movement of gold, and was also
an energy flow.  Slaves ate for ten to twenty
years in their homeland before raiders or
traders took them off.  In effect this elimi-
nated the difficulty of transporting an equiv-
alent amount of food, especially as most of
them walked from their neolithic villages to
civilization (e.g., McNeill 1964: 28-29;
Wilbur 1943).
   There is no question that slaves and pre-
cious metals conferred status upon their
owners and can be classified as luxuries. 
But, when the concept luxury is opposed to the
concept utility, the power and energy dimen-
sions of a rich man's, or a rich institut-
ion's, "things" fade from view.  Notwithstand-
ing their luxury status -- in fact precisely
because they were highly valued -- gold and
other preciosities often served a political
end, either in war or in the construction of
great patron-client chains.  As such they were
no less critical than food to resource mobili-
zation.
   The idea that one should conceptually
oppose luxuries to essentials is central to
The Modern World-System.  Difficult to main-
tain with consistency, I think that it ac-
counts for the book's confusing approach to
precapitalist social change.  Wallerstein,
however, is hardly alone to insist on it. 
Rather, the implied opposition seems closely
related to other dualisms that are profoundly
ingrained in Western social thought: between
spirit and matter, mind and body, work and
play.  When placed in such a dichotomous frame
of reference, the word "luxury" conjures up
the profligate excesses that are suggested by
its Latin connotations, lasciviousness and
lust.
   In conclusion, I would like to propose that
thinking about a precapitalist world-system
will help clarify the Western intellectual
tendency to drive a wedge between necessities
and luxuries; the same wedge that separates
God from the Devil.  The self-confident ideol-
ogues of a core-area like Byzantium would not
have felt the need to stigmatize luxuries, nor
would culture brokers in peripheral areas
which over the centuries accommodated to the
demands of external dominants.  But in Western
Europe which, although peripheral, was prop-
itiously located to resist predation, vigi-
lance would have made sense.  If so, then
Wallerstein's categorical claim that luxuries
are non-essential -- read dangerous and cor-
rupting -- originated as the ideological
aspect of a secular movement from import
restriction and import substitution to eventu-
al industrial development.  Such a conclusion
puts The Modern World-System at a threshold. 
While not yet giving us culture-free answers
to such "big" questions as "Why Europe?" and
"Why England?," it nevertheless offers the
intellectual tools for a new and much broader
understanding of this part of the world than
social science has had in the past.  One
anticipates that it will stimulate undertak-
ings, among historians too, that will push
familiar arguments to another level.

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