3


          5000 Years of World System History:
            The Cumulation of Accumulation

         Barry K. Gills and Andre Gunder Frank


 
INTRODUCTORY SUMMARY 

We argue that the main features of the
economic and interstate world system already
analyzed by Wallerstein (l974) and Modelski
(l987) for the "modern" world system, and for
earlier ones by Chase-Dunn (l986, l989) and
others, and in this book by Chase-Dunn and
Hall (Chapter 1) and Wilkinson (Chapter 4 and
also 1987) also characterize the development
of this same world system in medieval and
ancient times, indeed for at least the past
five millennia.  These features are 1) the
historical continuity and development of a
single world economy and inter-polity system;
2) capital accumulation, technological
progress, and ecological
adaptation/degradation as the principal motor
forces in the world system; 3) the
hierarchical center-periphery political
economic structure of the world system; 4)
alternate periods of political economic
hegemony and rivalry (and war) in the world
system; 5) and long political economic cycles
of growth/accumulation, center/periphery
positions, hegemony/rivalry, etc.  Our study
of the unequal structure and uneven dynamic of
this world system is based, like a three
legged stool, on economic, political, and
cultural analysis.
   This essay covers the following topics and
advances the following theses, beginning with
the most concrete historical ones and going on
to progressively more abstract theoretical
ones.  
 
I. WORLD SYSTEM ORIGINS 
 
1.   The origins of our present world system
(WS) can and should be traced             back at
least 5000 years to the relations between
Mesopotamia and         Egypt.  
2.   The ecological basis of the WS accounts
for its origins and much of its           subsequent
historical development.  
3.   Economic connections among various parts
of the WS began much          earlier and have been
much more prevalent and significant than is
often       realized.  
4.   World system extension grew to include
most of the Asio-Afro-        European ecumenical
("Eastern" hemisphere) landmass and its
outlying    islands by 600 BC and incorporated
much of the "Western" "New World"         by 1500 AD,
although there is increasing evidence of
earlier contacts        between them.  
 
II.   WORLD SYSTEM ROUTES AND NEXUSES
 
1.   Maritime routes furthered economic and
other connections among many        parts of the WS
and contributed to its expansion in important
ways.  
2.   The Silk Roads, over both land and
maritime routes, formed a sort of         spinal
column and rib cage of the body of this WS for
over 2000 years.  3.         Central Asia has been
a much neglected focal point of WS history
both        as a logistic nexus among its
regions to the East, South and West and               
through the recurrent pulse of its own waves
of migration and invasion           into these
regions.
4.   The Three Corridors and Logistic Nexuses
in what is now called the           "Middle East,"
"Inner Asia," and some sea straits have always
played      especially significant bottle-neck
choke-point roles in the development of               
the WS.  



III.  INFRASTRUCTURAL INVESTMENT, TECHNOLOGY
AND 
   ECOLOGY 
 
1.   Infrastructural investment accompanied
and supported most parts of the           WS from its
beginning and throughout its historical
development.  
2.   Technological innovation also played a
similar and related role            throughout the
historical development of the WS and mediated
in the      competitive economic and military
conflicts among its parts.
3.   Ecology, however, always and still
exercises an essential influence and            
constraint on this WS development.  
 
IV.   SURPLUS TRANSFER AND ACCUMULATION
RELATIONS 
 
1.   Surplus transfer and interpenetrating
accumulation among parts of the           WS are its
essential defining characteristics.  This
transfer means that no        part of the WS would
be as it was and is without its relations with
other       parts and the whole.  
2.   Center-Periphery-Hinterland (CPH)
complexes and hierarchies among           different
peoples, regions and classes have always been
an important part       of WS structure.  However,
the occupancy of musical chair places within
   this structure has frequently changed and
contributed to the dynamics of            WS
historical development.
3.   "Barbarian" nomad - sedentary
"civilization" relations have long been               
and continue to be especially significant and
neglected aspects of CPH            structure and WS
development.  
 
V. POLITICAL ECONOMIC MODES OF ACCUMULATION 
 
1.   Modes of accumulation, more than modes of
production, are the           essential
institutional forms and variations of WS
historical development;       but they are not only
localized or regional.
2.   Transitions in modes of accumulation are
not unidirectional in WS            history and
development.
3.   Public/private accumulation are both
collaborative and conflicting             
institutional forms and mixes of investment
and accumulation.  
4.   Economy/polity contradictions
characterize the WS throughout its              
history in that economic organization is much
wider and WS wide, while            political state
and even imperial organization is much more
local and         regional.

VI.   HEGEMONY AND SUPER-HEGEMONY 
 
1.   Hegemony is the political and economic
(and sometimes also cultural)             domination
of peoples and regions in parts of the WS,
which is based on       the centralization of
accumulation in the same.
2.   Cycles of accumulation and hegemony are
causally interrelated and           characterize the
development of the WS throughout its history. 

3.   Super-hegemony is the extension of
hegemony or the hierarchical        ordering of
primus inter pares hegemonies to centralize
accumulation on         a WS level. 
Super-hegemony has been acknowledged for part
of the 19th       and 20th centuries, but may
already have occurred earlier as well.  
4.   Cumulation of Accumulation is the
culminating synthesis of the        ecological,
economic, technological, political, social,
and cultural      structures and processes in WS
history.  
 
VII.  A HISTORICAL MATERIALIST POLITICAL
ECONOMY AND             RESEARCH AGENDA 

1.   Historical materialist political economic
summary conclusions are       drawn from the
foregoing arguments.  
2.   Political, economic and cultural three
legged stools characterize the WS         through the
interrelations and mutual support of all three
aspects of        social history.  Therefore, any
historical materialist political economy of
   the WS must incorporate all three.
3.   Analytic and research agendas on the
structure and dynamics of WS        history over
5000 or more years must search for more system
wide        characteristics, changes, perhaps
even cycles, and development.  







I. WORLD SYSTEM ORIGINS 
 
1. The Origins 

The designation in time of the origin of the
world system depends very much on what concept
of system is employed.  We may illustrate this
problem by analogy with the origins of a major
river system.  For instance, look at the
Missouri-Mississippi river system.  In one
sense, each major branch has its own origin. 
Yet the Mississippi River can be said to have
a later derivative origin where the two major
branches join together, near St. Louis,
Missouri.  By convention, the river is called
"The Mississippi" and it is said to originate
in Minnesota.  Yet the larger and longer
branch is called "the Missouri," which
originates in the Rocky Mountains in Montana. 
Of course, all of these also have other larger
and smaller inflows, each with their own
point(s) of origin.  The problem is how to set
a fixed point of origin when in fact no such
single point of origin exists for the river
system as a whole.  In the case of the world
system it would be possible to place its
origins far up stream in the Neolithic period. 
However, it may be more appropriate to discuss
the origins further down stream, where major
branches converge.  
   By the river system analogy, we may
identify the separate origins of Sumer, Egypt,
and the Indus as sometime in the fourth to the
third millenniums BC.  The world system begins
with their later confluence.  David Wilkinson
(1989) dates the birth of "Central
Civilization," through the political -
conflictual confluence of Mesopotamia and
Egypt into one over-arching states system, at
around 1500 BC.  Wilkinson's work is of very
great value to the analysis of world system
history.  Essentially, the confluence of
"Mesopotamia" and "Egypt" gave birth to the
world system.  However, by the criteria of
defining systemic relations, spelled out
below, the confluence occurs considerably
earlier than 1500 BC.  By economic criteria of
"inter-penetrating accumulation," the
confluence included the Indus valley and the
area of Syria and the Levant.  Thus, the
confluence occurred sometime in the early or
mid third millennium BC, that is by about
2700-2400 BC.  
 
2. The Ecological Basis 
 
Historical materialist political economy
begins with the recognition that "getting a
living" is the ultimate basis of human social
organization.  The ultimate basis of "getting
a living" is ecological however.  The
invention of agriculture made possible the
production of a substantial surplus.  Gordon
Childe (1951) made famous the term "Neolithic
Revolution" to describe the profound effects
on human social organization brought about by
the production of an agricultural surplus. 
The subsequent "Urban Revolution" and the
states that developed on this basis
contributed to the formation of our world
system.  
   From the outset, this social organization
had an economic imperative based on a new type
of relationship with the environment.  The
alluvial plains of Egypt, Mesopotamia and
Indus are similar in that their rich water
supply and fertile soil makes possible the
production of a large agricultural surplus
when the factors of production are properly
organized.  However, all three areas were
deficient in many natural resources, such as
timber, stone, and certain metals.  Therefore,
they had an ecologically founded economic
imperative to acquire certain natural
resources from outside their own ecological
niches in order to "complete" their own
production cycles.  Urban civilization and the
state required the maintenance of a complex
division of labor, a political apparatus, and
a much larger trade or economic nexus than
that under the direct control of the state. 
Thus, the ecological origins of the world
system point to the inherent instability of
the urban civilizations and the states from
which it emerged.  This instability was both
ecological - economic and strategic. 
Moreover, the two were intertwined from the
beginning.  
   Economic and strategic instability and
insecurity led to efforts to provide for the
perpetual acquisition of all necessary natural
resources, even if the required long distance
trade routes were outside the direct political
control of the state.  This was only possible
through manipulated trade and through the
assertion of direct political controls over
the areas of supply.  The internal demographic
stability, and/or demographic expansion, of
the first urban centers depended upon such
secure acquisition of natural resources.  
   However, in a field of action in which many
centers are expanding simultaneously, there
must come a point when their spheres of
influence become contiguous, and then overlap. 
As the economic nexus of the first urban
civilizations and states expanded and
deepened, competition and conflict over
control of strategic sources of materials and
over the routes by which they were acquired 
tended to intensify.  For example, control
over certain metals was crucial to attaining
technological and military superiority vis a
vis contemporary rivals.  Failure to emulate
the most advanced technology constituted, then
as now, a strategic default.  
   The ultimate rationale for the origins of
the world system were thus embedded in the
economic imperative of the urban based states. 
A larger and larger economic nexus was built
up.  Specialization within the complex
division of  labor deepened, while the  entire
nexus expanded territorially "outward." In the
process, more and more ecological niches were
assimilated into one interdependent economic
system.  Thereby, the world system destroyed
and assimilated self-reliant cultures in its
wake.  
   By the third millennium BC, the
Asio-Afro-European economic nexus, upon which
the world system was based, was already well
established.  Thereafter, the constant shifts
in position among metropoles in the world
system cannot be properly understood without
analysis of the ecological and technological
factors "compelling" certain lines of action. 
The rise and decline of urban centers and
states can be made more understandable by
placing them within the world systemic
context.  This also involves paying attention
to their role in the economic nexus,
particularly with regard to the sources and
supply of key commodities and natural
resources.  The logic of the political
structure of the world system is one in which
the security of the member states, and their
ability to accumulate surplus, is perpetually
vulnerable to disruption.  This situation
created a dynamic of perpetual rivalry.  Thus,
attempts are made to extend political control
over strategic areas of supply in the overall
economic nexus.
 
3. Economic Connections 

New historical evidence suggests that economic
connections through trade and migration, as
well as through pillage and conquest, have
been  much more prevalent  and much  wider in
scope than was previously recognized.  They
have also gone much farther back through world
history than is generally admitted.  By the
same token, manufacturing, transport,
commercial and other service activities are
also older and more widespread than often
suggested.  The long history and systemic
nature of these economic connections have not
received nearly as much attention as they
merit (Adams 1943).  Even more neglected have
been these trade connections' far reaching
importance in the social, political, and
cultural life of "societies" and their
relations with each other in the world system
as a whole.  Even those who do study trade
connections,  as for instance Philip Curtin's
(l984) work on cross-cultural trade diasporas, 
often neglect  systematic study of the world
systemic complex of these trade connections.  

   Historical evidence to date indicates that
economic contacts in the Middle East ranged
over a very large area even several thousand
years before the first urban states appeared. 
The Anatolian settlement Catal Huyuk is often
cited as an example of a community with long
distance trade connections some seven or eight
thousand years ago.  Jericho is another often
cited example.  Trade or economic connections
between Egypt and Mesopotamia were apparently
somewhat intermittent before 3000 BC, and
therefore possibly not systemic.  However,
both Egypt and Mesopotamia very early on
developed economic connections with Syria and
the Levant, which formed a connecting corridor
between the two major zones.  The putative
first pharaoh of unified Egypt, Narmer, may
have had economic connections to the Levant. 
Certainly by 2700 BC, Egypt had formal
political and economic relations with the city
of Byblos on the Levantine coast.  Byblos is
probably the earliest port of economic contact
mentioned in both Egyptian and Mesopotamian
historical sources.  
   For both Egypt and Mesopotamia, war and
trade with Syria and the Levant  involved the
search for access to strategic and other
materials, such as timber, metals, oils, and
certain luxury consumption goods.  The
apparent goal of Akkadian imperial expansion
was to gain the benefits of putting all of the
most strategic routes in one vast corridor
from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf
under its sole control.  There is evidence
that Akkad maintained maritime economic
connections with the Indus, known as
"Meluhha," via ports in the Persian Gulf. 
Thus, Akkad consolidated a privileged position
in the overall economic nexus.  The city
states of Syria and the Levant became the
objects of intense rivalry between Egypt and
Mesopotamia.  Oscillation occurred in the
control of these areas: from the first and
second dynasties of Egypt, over to Akkad, then
to the third dynasty of Ur.  By the nineteenth
century BC, Egypt again exercised influence
over most of the Levant as vassal states.  It
is clear that throughout a considerable
historical period, even to the time of the
Assyrian and then the Persian empires, Syria
and the Levant played a crucial role as
logistical inter-linkage zones and entrepots
within the world system.  They linked the
Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and Indus zones in one
world system.  

4. World System Extension 
 
Accumulation is a major incentive for, and the
ultimate cause of, economic, political, and
military expansion by and inter-linkage within
the world system.  Therefore, the process of
accumulation and its expansion is also
importantly related to the extension of the
boundaries of the world system.  Two
additional analogies of expansion may be
useful to understand the process: the glacier
analogy and the ink blot analogy.  By analogy
to a glacier, the world system expanded along
a course of its own making, in part adapting
to pre-existing topology and in part itself
restructuring this topology.  By analogy to an
ink blot, the world system also spread
outward, beyond its area of early confluence. 
Probably the most spectacular single instance
of this expansion was the "discovery" of the
New World and later Oceania.  David Wilkinson
(1987) also sees Central Civilization as
expanding into other areas and societies and
incorporating them into itself.  In one sense,
the process is one of simple incorporation of
previously unincorporated areas, on analogy
with the expansion of an ink blot.
   However, the incorporation of some regions
into the world system also involved processes
more like merger than mere assimilation, as
when two expanding ink blots merge.  For
instance, the incorporation of India, and
especially of China, appear to be more merger
than assimilation.  Mesopotamian trade with
the Indus was apparently well established at
the time of the Akkadian empire.  Repeated
evidence of economic contact with India
exists, though with significant periods of
intermittent disruption.  These disruptions
make it difficult to set a firm date for the
merger of India with the world system. 
Chinese urban centers and states appear to
have developed essentially autonomously in the
archaic Shang period.  However, the overland
routes to the central world system to the west
were already opened by the end of the second
millennium BC, particularly as migratory
routes for peoples of Central and Inner Asia. 
The actual historical merger of Chinese
complexes into the world system comes only
after state formation in China reached a more
advanced stage, in the late Zhou period.  A
series of loose hegemons began with Duke Huan
of Qi (685-643 BC) and a process of
unification of smaller feudatories into larger
territorial states occurred.  According to
Wolfram Eberhard (1977), the eventual victory
of the state of Qin and the creation of the
first centralized empire in China was
influenced by Qin's strong trade relations
with Central Asia.  These economic connections
allowed Qin to accumulate considerable profit
from trade.  The Wei and Tao valleys of the
Qin state were "the only means of transit from
east to west.  All traffic from and to Central
Asia had to take this route" (Eberhard, 1977
p.60).  
   The maintenance of maritime and overland
trade routes, and the peoples located in the
areas between major zones, play key logistical
interlinkage roles in the process of merger. 
In the formation of the world system, the
interaction of high civilization with tribal
peoples, especially in Inner and Central Asia,
but also in Arabia and Africa, played a
crucial but largely neglected role, to which
we shall return below.


II.   WORLD SYSTEM ROUTES AND NEXUSES 

1. Maritime Routes 
 
The advertising blurb of the just published
The Sea-Craft of Prehistory by Paul Johnstone
(1989) reads "the nautical dimension of
prehistory has not received the attention it
deserves....  Recent research has shown that
man travelled and tracked over greater
distances and at a much earlier date than has
previously been thought possible.  Some of
these facts can be explained by man's mastery
of water transport from earliest times." 
Generally the sea routes were cheaper and
favored over the overland ones.  Some
particularly important maritime routes are
discussed below.

2. The Silk Roads 
 
The Silk Roads formed a sort of spinal column
and rib cage - or more analogously perhaps,
the circulatory system - of the body of this
world system for some 2000 years before 1500
AD.  These "roads" extended overland between
China, through Inner and Central Asia, to the
"Middle East" (West Asia).  From there, they
extended through the Mediterranean into Africa
and Europe.  However, this overland complex
was also connected by numerous maritime silk
"road" stretches through the Mediterranean,
Black Sea, Red Sea, Persian Gulf, and along
many rivers.  Moreover, the predominantly
overland Silk Road complex was complemented by
a vast maritime Silk Road network centered on
the Indian Ocean through the Arabian Sea and
Bay of Bengal, and on the South China Sea. 
These maritime Silk Roads in turn were
connected by overland portage across the Kra
isthmus on the Malay Peninsula, as well as by
ship through the Malaccan Straits between it
and Sumatra, etc.       The Silk Roads of course
derive their name from China's principal
export product to the West.  However, the
trade of items and peoples extended far beyond
silk alone.  Indeed, the silk had to be paid
for and complemented by a large variety of
other staple and luxury goods, money and
services, including enslaved and other people
who performed them.  Thus, the Silk Roads also
served as the trade routes, urban and
administrative centers, and military,
political, and cultural sinews of a vast and
complex division of labor and cultural
diffusion.  
 
3. Central Asia 
 
If one looks at a map of Eurasia, it becomes
clear that Central Asia (in present
Afghanistan and Soviet Central Asia) was well
positioned to act as the ultimate nodal
center.  Central Asia was the crossroads of a
world system in which China, India, Persia,
Mesopotamia, the Levant and the Mediterranean
basin all participated.  For instance, Central
Asia played a key role in the joint
participation in the world system of Han
China, Gupta India, Parthian Persia and the
Roman empire.
   However, Central and Inner Asia were also
more than the meeting points of others.  Inner
and Central Asia also originated their own
cycles of outward invasory/migratory movements
in all directions.  These cycles lasted an
average of approximately two centuries and
occurred in roughly half millennium intervals. 
For instance, there were waves of invasions
from 1700-1500 BC, 1200-1000 BC, around 500
BC, around 0, from 400-600 AD and
1000-1200/1300 AD.  Each inner wave pushed out
outer waves, except the last one of Chinggis
Khan and his successors to Tamerlane after
him, who overran all themselves.  
   Whether or not all these invasions
responded to climatic changes, presumably they
were both cause  and effect  of  changes in
rates of  demographic growth and  decline,
which  may  in turn have climatic causes. 
However, they were also caused by - and in
turn had effects on - the ecological,
socioeconomic and political relations with
their civilized neighbors.  Thus, Inner and 
Central Asia and its pulse require special
attention in world system history.  How
central was Central Asia to world system
history?  To what extent was Central Asia, and
not primarily the other civilized areas,
something of a motor force of change in the
whole system?  How was the rise and decline of
various cities (Samarkand!) and states in this
area related to system wide developments in
trade? 
   The place and role of Central Asia is as
important as it is neglected.  The entire
development of the world system has been
profoundly affected by the successive waves of
invasion from the Eurasian steppes on the
perimeter of the agro-industrial zones.  This
"system implosion" is such a major phenomenon
that it cries out for systemic study and
explanation.  These system implosions were not
deus ex machina, but integral to the overall
developmental logic of the world system's
expansionary trajectory.  In particular, the
invasions and migrations from Inner and
Central Asia were always instrumental in
transforming the economic, social, political
and cultural life of their neighboring
civilizations - and in forming their racial
and ethnic complexions.  Nor has the
enormously important role of Central Asia as
an intermediary zone in the world system
received the systematic analysis which its
functions merit.  Other nomadic and tribal
peoples, for instance on the Arabian Peninsula
before Mohammed and in much of Africa, also
participated in world system history and world
accumulation in ways which have not been
acknowledged except by very few specialists.  
 
4. The Three Corridors and Logistic Nexuses 
 
Three magnets of attraction for political
economic expansion stand out.  One is sources
of human (labor) and/or material inputs (land,
water, raw materials, precious metal, etc.)
and technological inputs into the process of
accumulation.  The second is markets to
dispose of one zone's surplus production to
exchange for more inputs, and to capture
stored value.  The third, and perhaps most
significant, are the most privileged nexuses
or logistical corridors of inter-zonal trade. 
Bottleneck control over the supply routes of
raw materials, especially of metals and other
strategic materials, plays a key role in
attracting powers to such areas.  This may
also provide a basis upon which to make a bid
for expansion of imperial power.  Especially
here, economic, political and military
conflict and/or cultural, "civilizational,"
religious and ideological influence all offer
special advantages.  That is, special
advantages for tapping into the accumulation
and the system of exploitation of other zones
in benefit of one's own accumulation. 
Therefore, it is not mere historical
coincidence that these three nexus areas have
recurrently been the fulcra of rivalry,
commerce, and of religious and other cultural
forms of diffusion.  
   Certain strategically placed regions and
corridors have played such especially
important roles in world system development. 
They have been magnets which attracted the
attention of expansionist powers and also of
migrants and invaders.  Major currents of
thought also migrated through them.  This
attention is based on their role in the
transfer of surplus within the world system,
without which the world system does not exist. 
Certain metropoles have become attractive in
and of themselves due to their positions along
trade corridors, the growth of a market within
the metropolitan city, and the accumulated
wealth of the metropole itself.  The rise and
fall of great regional metropolitan centers
and their "succession" reflects extra-regional
changes in which they participate.  For
example, the succession of metropoles in Egypt
from Memphis to Alexandria to Cairo reflects
fundamental underlying shifts in world system
structure.  So does the succession in
Mesopotamia from Babylon to Seleucia to
Baghdad.
   Three nexus corridors have played a
particularly pivotal and central logistical
interlinkage role in the development of the
world system.  
 
1.  The Nile - Red Sea corridor (with canal
or overland connections between           them and to
the Mediterranean Sea, and open access to the
Indian      Ocean and beyond).  
2.  The Syria - Mesopotamia - Persian Gulf
corridor (with overland routes            linking the
Mediterranean coast through Syria, on via the
Orontes,    Euphrates and Tigris rivers, to the
Persian Gulf, which gives open access           to the
Indian Ocean and beyond).  This nexus also
offered connections           to overland routes to
Central Asia.  
3.  The Aegean - Black Sea - Central Asia
corridor (connecting the            Mediterranean
via the Dardanelles and Bosporus to the
over-land "Silk         Roads" to and from Central
Asia, from where connecting routes extended
   overland to India and China).  

   The choice between the two primarily sea
route corridors mostly fell to the Persian
Gulf route.  It was both topographically and
climatically preferred to the Red Sea route. 
Moreover, the Persian Gulf corridor had
connecting routes overland to Central Asia,
which came to serve as a central node in the
transfer of surplus among the major zones of
the world system.
   These three nexus corridors represented not
only mere routes of trade.  Repeatedly, they
were integrated zones of economic and
political development and recurrently the
locus of attempts to build imperial systems. 
As the world system expanded and deepened,
attempts were made by certain powers to place
either two or all three corridors under a
single imperial structure.  Thus, such a power
would control the key logistical interlinkages
which have been central to the world system. 
For instance, the Assyrian empire attempted to
control both the Syrian - Mesopotamian
corridor and the Nile - Red Sea corridor, but
succeeded only briefly and sporadically.  The
Persian empire likewise controlled both these
corridors for a time, and it also had partial
control over the Aegean - Black Sea - Central
Asian corridor.  Thus the Persian empire is
the first historical instance of a "three
corridor hegemony."  Alexander the Great's
grand strategic design for a world empire or
"world system hegemony" included plans to
control all three corridors, plus the Indus
complexes and the west Mediterranean basin. 
His successors split the Macedonian conquests
almost precisely into realms parallel to the
three corridors.  They allowed the Indus to
fall out of Seleucid influence to the Mauryan
empire and the west Mediterranean basin to
control by Carthage and Rome.  During the
Hellenistic period, the recurrent rivalries
between the Ptolomaic and Seleucid dynasties
are indicative of continued struggles between
the corridors for privileged position in the
world system's accumulation processes.  Even
the Roman imperium did not entirely unify the
three corridors however, since Mesopotamia was
denied to Rome first by the Parthians, and
later by the Sassanian Persians.  They used
their control of this area to extract
considerable profit from the trade between
Rome, India, and China.  
   Of course, each of these three main
corridors had competing/complimentary
alternative variants and feeder routes of its
own.  For instance, there were several silk
roads between East and West and different
feeder routes in East and Central  Asia and
to/from  South  Asia.  There were also routes
connecting Northern and Western Europe through
the Baltic Sea via the Dnieper, Don, Volga,
and other Ukrainian and Russian  routes. 
There were routes connecting the Adriatic to
continental Europe, and the east Mediterranean
to the west Mediterranean.  Similarly,
topological and other factors also favored
some locations and routes as magnets of
attraction and logistic nexuses in and around
Asia.  They deserve much more attention than
they have received in world history.  As the
Asio-Afro-European nexus expanded and
deepened, the number and role of these routes
and choke points increased.  At the same time,
their relative importance changed vis a vis
each other as a result of world system
development.  Locations such as the Straits of
Malacca and of Ceylon had significant
logistical roles for very long periods of
world system development.  
   The three overland and sea route corridors
and their extensions were the most important
nexuses between Europe and Asia for two
millennia before the shift to transoceanic
routes in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries.  This historic shift from the
centrality of the three corridors to that of
transoceanic logistical interlinkages was
probably the single most important logistical
shift in world history and world system
development.  However, rather than creating it
a la Wallerstein (l974), the shift occurred
within the already existing world system.  
 

III.  INFRASTRUCTURAL INVESTMENT, TECHNOLOGY
AND 
   ECOLOGY 
 
1. Infrastructural Investment and Accumulation
 
Accumulation implies infrastructural
investment and technological development. 
Infrastructural investment takes many forms in
many sectors, such as agriculture,
transportation, communications, the military,
industrial and manufacturing infrastructure,
and bureaucratic administration.  There is
investment even in ideological (symbolic)
infrastructure, both of the cult of the state
and of religion.  In the state form of
accumulation, the state seeks to create social
wealth in order to extract it.  By laying the
basis for increases in production and
facilitating accumulation, the state increases
its own access to surplus and therefore its
potential capabilities vis a vis rival states. 
This in turn helps it to protect "what we've
got" and to get more.  In the private form,
the propertied elites likewise create wealth
in order to extract it and invest in
infrastructure to facilitate production and
thereby accumulation.  The ultimate rationale
of such investment would in all cases be to
preserve, enhance, and expand the basis of
accumulation itself.  The development of
infrastructure and the technology it embodies
feed back into the generation of surplus and
accumulation.  This growth of surplus in turn
feeds back into further growth and development
of infrastructure and technology in cumulative
fashion.  The pattern is spiral, whereby the
world system itself grows and becomes more
firmly "established" via infrastructural
investment and accumulation.  
 
2. Technological Innovation 
 
Technological progress in techniques of
production, organization and trade, both
military and civilian, has long played an
important, and often neglected, role in the
history of the world system and in the
changing relations among its parts. 
Technological advance and advantage has been
crucial throughout history in armaments,
shipping and other transportation as well as
in construction, agriculture, metalworking and
other manufacturing methods and facilities. 
Progress, leads, and lags in all of these have
had significant contributory if not causative
effects on (and also some derivative effects
from) the regional and other relations of
inequality within the world system.  Some
examples were examined by William McNeill
(1982) in The Pursuit of Power.           
Infrastructural investment is linked to
technological change and to organizational
innovation.  Technological change in archaic
and ancient periods, and even in medieval
periods, was mostly slower than in modern
industrial times.  However, the essence of
patterned relationships between technological
innovation, infrastructural investment cycles,
and the cycles of accumulation and hegemony
(discussed below) probably have existed
throughout history.  When and what were the
most significant technological innovations in
world system history?  Which innovations
brought about restructuring of accumulation
and of hegemony in the world system?  Which
altered the logistical interlinkages?  The
diffusion of technology across the world
system is another major area for systematic
and systemic analysis.  
   In the general period of the
contemporaneous Roman/Byzantine, Par-
thian/Persian Sassanian, Indian Mauryan/Gupta
and Chinese Han empires, cumulative
infrastructural investments integrated each of
these empires into a single world system. 
This high level of systemic integration was
achieved   via the  well-developed logistic
nexuses  and the simultaneity of imperial
expansion.  At the end of that period, the
entire world system experienced a general
crisis.  Hinterland peoples from Inner and
Central Asia invaded Rome, Persia, India and
China.  They caused (or followed?) a decline
in infrastructural investment and (temporary)
serious disruption of the world system's
logistical interlinkages compared to the
previous era. 
   How is infrastructural investment linked to
productivity and increases in productivity to
the processes of accumulation in the world
system?  Technological innovation and
technological change has been pervasive in
world system development.  Gordon Childe
(1942) pioneered a materialist analysis of the
effects of technology on the ancient economy. 
Logistic capabilities, for instance those of
maritime trade, depend on technological
capability.  So does the dynamic of military
rivalry.  Indeed, the expansion of the world
system depended from the outset on
technological capabilities.  Invasions from
the "barbarian" perimeter to the civilized
centers depended upon the technological and
military superiorities of the barbarians. 
Such invasions did not cease until "civilized"
technological developments made the attainment
of military superiority by the barbarians
virtually impossible.  By asserting a new
military-technological superiority, the
Russian and Manchu empires finally put an end
to the strategic threat of Inner Asia in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries AD.  
   The industrial revolution gave European
powers the military capability to destroy or
subordinate contemporary empires in the world
system such as the Mughal in India, the Qing
in China, and the Ottoman in the three
corridors region.  
 
3. Ecology 
 
Technology has always been intimately
associated with the ecological interface of
the world system and its natural resource
base.  For instance, the technologies of
farming created a secular trend to place more
and more area under agricultural production,
thus to increase the sources of agricultural
surplus.  Particular technological innovations
have dramatically affected the ecological
interface, particularly those of
industrialized production.  Since the
introduction of these technologies, the trend
has been their extension across more and more
of the world system, often with devastating
ecological consequences.  
   There have been instances when
environmental conditions brought about major
changes in world system development.  For
instance, the salination of soils and silting
up of irrigation works affected the relative
economic strength of certain zones.  For
example, already before and even more after
the sacking of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258,
Mesopotamia experienced relative decline. 
This was partly due to such environmental
factors, and partly to shifts in logistical
interlinkages in the world system.  
   Certain areas have been extremely difficult
to incorporate into the world system for
primarily ecological and/or topographical
reasons.  These difficulties (still)
characterize, for instance, the Tibetan
plateau, the Amazonian basin, the Great
Northern Arctic of Canada and the Soviet
Union, and Antarctica.  The social ecology of
the peoples of Inner Asia, which Owen
Lattimore (1940) contrasted to that of
sedentary agricultural peoples, was a major
factor in the world system's development for
most of world history.  The present ecological
crises of industrial civilization remind us
that ultimately ecology and the natural
environment set limits on the expansion of the
world system and on sustaining production and
accumulation.  If there have been any
ecological cycles, rhythms, or trends, we
should investigate what they are and how they
have affected world system development.
 

IV.   SURPLUS TRANSFER AND ACCUMULATION
RELATIONS 
 
1. Surplus Transfer and Interpenetrating
Accumulation 

The capture by elite A here (with or without
its redistribution here) of part of the
economic surplus extracted by elite B there
means that there is "interpenetrating
accumulation" between A and B.  This transfer
or exchange of surplus connects not only the
two elites, but also their "societies'"
economic, social, political, and ideological
organization.  That is, the transfer, exchange
or "sharing" of surplus connects the elite A
here not only to the elite B there.  Surplus
transfer also links the "societies'"
respective processes of surplus management,
their structures of exploitation and
oppression by class and gender, and their
institutions of the state and the economy. 
Thus, the transfer or exchange of surplus is
not a socially "neutral" relationship, but
rather a profoundly systemic one.  Through
sharing sources of surplus, the elite A here
and the classes it exploits are systemically
interlinked to the "mode of production," and
even more important, to the mode of
accumulation in B there.  By extension, if
part of the surplus of elite B here is also
traded, whether through equal or more usually
unequal exchange, for part of the surplus
accumulated by elite C there, then not only B
and C but also A and C are systemically linked
through the intermediary B.  Then A, B and C
are systemically connected in the same
over-arching system of accumulation.  
   This means that surplus extraction and
accumulation are "shared" or
"interpenetrating" across otherwise discrete
political boundaries.  Thus, their elites
participate in each others' system of
exploitation vis a vis the producing classes. 
This participation may be through economic
exchange relations via the market or through
political relations (e.g., tribute), or
through combinations of both.  All of these
relations characterize the millenarian
relationship, for instance, between the
peoples of China and Inner Asia.  This inter-
penetrating accumulation thus creates a causal
interdependence between structures of
accumulation and between political entities. 
Therefore the structure of each component
entity of the world system is saliently
affected by this interpenetration.  Thus,
empirical evidence of such interpenetrating
accumulation through the transfer or exchange
of surplus is the minimum indicator of a
systemic relationship.  Concomitantly, we
should seek evidence that this interlinkage
causes at least some element of economic
and/or political restructuring in the
respective zones.  For instance, historical
evidence of a fiscal crisis in one state or a
zone of the world system (e.g., in third
century Rome) as a consequence of an exchange
of surplus with another zone would be a clear
indicator of a relationship at a high level of
systemic integration.  Evidence of change in
the mode of accumulation and the system of
exploitation in one zone as a function of the
transfer of surplus to another zone would also
constitute evidence of systemic relations. 
Evidence of political alliances and/or
conflict related to participation in a system
of transfer of surplus would also be
considered evidence of a systemic relation-
ship.  According to these criteria, if
different "societies," empires, and
civilizations, as  well as other  "peoples,"
regularly exchanged surplus, then they also
participated in the same world system.  That
is "society" A here could and would not be the
same as it was in the absence of its contact
with B there, and vice versa.  
   Trade in high value luxury items, not to
mention precious metals in particular, may,
contra Wallerstein (1974, 1989), be even more
important than lower value staple trade in
defining systemic relations.  This is because
the high value "luxury" trade is essentially
an inter-elite exchange.  These commodities,
besides serving elite consumption or
accumulation, are typically also stores of
value.  They embody aspects of social
relations of production, which reproduce the
division of labor, the class structure, and
the mode of accumulation.  Precious metals are
only the most obvious example, but many
"luxury" commodities have played a similar
role, as is admirably argued by Jane Schneider
in chapter 2 above.  Thus, trade in both high
value "luxury" items and staple commodities
are indicators of interpenetrating
accumulation.   
2. Center-Periphery-Hinterland (CPH) 
 
Center-periphery-hinterland (CPH) complexes
and hierarchies among different peoples,
regions and classes have always been an
important part of world system structure. 
However, the occupancy of musical chair places
within this structure has frequently changed
and contributed to the dynamics of world
system historical development.  To what extent
(and why?) have the world system and its parts
been characterized by center-periphery and
other structural inequalities?  Wallerstein
(1974 and other works) and Frank (l978 a,b,
1981) among others, have posed questions and
offered answers about the center-periphery
structure of the world system since 1500. 
Ekholm and Friedman (l982), Chase-Dunn and
Hall (Chapter 1) and others are trying to
apply similar analyses to world systems before
1500.  The "necessity" of a division between
center and periphery and the "function" of
semiperipheries in between are increasingly
familiar, not the least thanks to the
widespread critiques of these ideas. 
Chase-Dunn and Hall (Chapter 1) survey the
propositions and debates.  Wilkinson (Chapter
4) examines center-periphery structures all
over the world for 5,000  years.  Rowlands,
Larsen, and Kristiansen (1987) analyze center
and periphery in the ancient world.  Indeed,
now this entire book is dedicated to examining
precapitalist center-periphery relations.  We
argue, however, that these relations also
characterize this same world system for
several millennia back. 
   Chase Dunn and Hall (Chapter 1) and
Wilkinson (Chapter 4) have already made the
argument that center-periphery hierarchies
characterize systemic development much further
back in world historical  development than
1500 AD.  In fact, center-periphery relations
characterize development since the origins of
the state and systems of states.  However, we
agree with Thomas Hall (l986 and chapter 7
below) that we need a more comprehensive
"center-periphery-hinterland" (CPH) concept
than most  other scholars have used.  Hall
(l986) refers to "contact peripheries."  This
hinterland is not directly penetrated by the
extracting classes of the center, but
nevertheless    it has systemic links with the
center-periphery zone and its processes of
accumulation.  Wallerstein's use of the term
hinterland to mean external to the world
system is insufficient because it neglects the
structural and systemic significance of zones
which are "outside" of, but nonetheless
related to, the center-periphery complex.  We,
of course, wish to stress the contribution to
accumulation among all participants,
especially through the transfer of surplus,
made by these hinterland-periphery-center
"contacts."  These CPH relationships have been
insufficiently analyzed.
   The CPH complex does not refer to mere
geographical position, nor only to unequal
levels of development.  CPH also refers to the
relations among the classes, peoples and
"societies" that constitute the mode of
accumulation.  The CPH complex is the basic
social complex upon which hegemony, as
discussed below, is constructed in a larger
systemic context.  More research is necessary
on how "geographical" position in a hegemonic
structure affects class position in the CPH
complex.  We could expect to find that the
class structure of a hegemonic state may be
significantly altered by the surplus that this
state accumulates from its subordinates in the
CPH complex.  For example, the subsidy to the
plebeian class of Rome may be taken as an
example of such systemic effects.  Conversely,
we might expect a CPH complex to give rise to
increased exploitation of producers in
subordinate positions.  
   The "hinterland" contains natural
resources, including human labor, which are
tapped by the center-periphery.  However, what
distinguishes the hinterland from the
periphery is that the peoples of the
hinterland are not fully, institutionally,
subordinate to the center in terms of surplus
extraction.  That is, they retain some degree
of social autonomy.  If a hinterland people
come under political means of extraction by
the center, then the process of
"peripheralization" begins.  Nevertheless,
despite a degree of social autonomy from the
center, the hinterland is in systemic
relations with the center.  The frequency of
center-hinterland conflict is one indicator of
such systemic relations.  The hinterland may
also have functional roles in logistical
interlinkage.  In this sense, the hinterland
may facilitate the transfer of surplus between
zones of the world system.  These roles of
hinterlands merit as much theoretical
attention in determining positional shifts and
systems change as those of semiperipheries.
   The center (or core) - periphery -
hinterland concept is not intended to replace,
but to extend, Wallerstein's (1974 and
elsewhere, Arrighi and Drangel 1986) core -
semiperiphery - periphery formulation. 
However, the semiperiphery has always been a
weak and confusing link in the argument.  The
hinterland "extension" may confuse it still
further and may counsel reformulation of the
whole complex.  For instance at a recent
conference (with Wallerstein, Arrighi and
Frank among others), Samir Amin suggested that
the semiperiphery has functionally become the
real periphery, because it is exploited by the
center; while the "periphery" has been
marginalized out of the system, because it no
longer has anything (or anybody) for the
center to exploit for its own accumulation. 
As argued above however, historically the
hinterland has also contributed to core
accumulation in the CPH complex.  
   Thus, CPH complexes are integral to the
structure of the world system in all periods. 
They must be studied, not only comparatively,
but also in their combination and interaction
in the world system.  It is important to
examine how center - periphery zones expanded
into the hinterland in order to  understand
the way in which accumulation processes were
involved.  The rationales of expansion and
assimilation in the hinterland  appear to be
related to the "profitability" of such
expansion, in terms of tapping new sources of
surplus.  They also help resolve internal
contradictions in the center-periphery 
complex  brought  about  as a result of
exploitation and demographic pressure.  Class
conflict in the center-periphery complex is
affected by the expansion of accumulation into
the hinterland.  Demographic trends are an
important factor; the hinterland provides new
resources to sustain the growing population of
the center-periphery zone.  The physical
geographical limits of hinterland
peripheralization by the center seem to be set
by both logistical capabilities and by a
cost-benefit calculus.  Areas are occupied
primarily if they can be made to pay for the
cost of their own occupation or are deemed to
be strategically necessary to protect another
profitable area.  Conversely, such areas are
again abandoned if, or when, their occupation
proves to be too costly.  Fortification at
such systemic boundaries has a dual function
of keeping the barbarians out and keeping the
producers in.  That is, such fortification
impedes military disruption of the zone of
extraction and also impedes the escape of
dependent-subordinate producers into the
"free" zone.
 
3. "Barbarian" Nomad - Sedentary
"Civilization" Relations 
 
It is important to examine how systemic links
between center and hinterland are formed.  How
does the hinterland interact over time with
the center-periphery complex and thereby
affect changes in the structure of that
complex itself, and vice versa?  A
particularly important aspect of this question
is the nature of the historical relations
between the so-called tribal "barbarians" and
the so-called "civilized" "societies."  How
are the barbarians "assimilated" into
civilization and yet also transform
civilization?  Throughout most of world
history, this barbarian-civilization
relationship has been crucial to the
territorial expansion of the state,
imperialism, and "civilization."
   The work of Arnold Toynbee (1973), Thomas
Hall (1986, 1989), Eric Wolf (1982), William
McNeill (1964) and Owen Lattimore (1940, 1962)
illuminate many aspects of how these
center-periphery-hinterland hierarchies are
created, deepened, and systemically
transformed.  Toynbee's "system implosion" is
of particular interest.  Robert Gilpin (1981)
follows Toynbee to show how an older center is
eventually encircled and engulfed by new
states on the periphery, which implode into
the center.  Thus, a "center-shift" takes
place by way of an implosion from the former
periphery to the center of the system.  For
instance, this occurred with the creation of
the Qin empire at the end of the Warring
States period in China.  It also happened with
the creation of the Macedonian empire at the
end of the classical period in Greece.  In
even earlier examples of such hinterland
impact, the "tribal" Guti, the Amorites, the
Kassites, and the Akkadians were intimately
involved in the political cycles of archaic
Mesopotamia.  Each of these peoples made a
transition from hinterland roles to that of
ruling class in the center.  Moreover, these
invasions of the center by the hinterland 
took place for systemic reasons, not just
gratuitously.  Eberhard (1977) and Gernet
(l985) analyze how Inner Asian nomads
repeatedly invaded China to appropriate its
productive structure and economic surplus. 
Frederick Teggart's (1939) study of
correlations of historical events in Rome and
China analyzes the systemic causal connections
across the whole Asio-Afro-European economic
nexus, which caused hinterland-center conflict
in one zone to affect relations in another
zone.  The sequencing of conflicts follows a
logic that corresponds to both logistical
elements in the nexus, struggles over shares
of accumulation, and social tensions due to
the expansionary pressure of the
center-periphery complex into the hinterland.





V. POLITICAL ECONOMIC MODES OF ACCUMULATION 
 
1. Modes of Accumulation 

If we are to study any "modes" at all, we
might better study the modes of accumulation,
instead of the "mode of production."  In the
world system, production is the means to an
end.  That end is consumption and accumula-
tion.  It may be useful to study the
differences, the mutual relations, 
combinations or the "articulations" of
"public" (state) and "private" and
"redistributive" and "market" modes of
accumulation.  It is doubtful that any of
these modes, or other modes, have ever existed
alone in any pure form anywhere.  However, we
should study not only how modes of
accumulation differ and combine with each
other "locally," but also how they
interconnect with each other throughout the
world system as a whole.  Thus, world system
history should both differentiate and combine
modes of accumulation: horizontally through
space as well as vertically through time.  The
"articulation" of modes is a way of analyzing
how the mode(s) of accumulation in one zone of
the world system is(are) affected by systemic
links with other zones' mode(s) of
accumulation.  Can the overall world system be
characterized by a single mode of
accumulation?  If not, why not? 
   Shifting the focus of analysis from
production to accumulation need not abandon
analysis of the class structure.  In fact, a
focus on the relations of accumulation should
sharpen the analysis of class relations. 
Geoffrey de Ste Croix (1981) argues that the
key to every social formation is how the
"propertied classes" extract the surplus from
the working classes and ensure themselves a
leisured existence.  He defines a mode of
production based on the means by which the
propertied classes obtain most of their
surplus.  This approach is an alternative to
trying to determine what form of relations of
production characterize the entire social
formation.  That is, he focuses on the
dominant mode of accumulation.  Ste Croix
delineates several means of extracting
surplus: wages, coerced labor (in many
variants), rent, and through the state (via
taxes, corvee labor, and through
"imperialism").  Interestingly, Ste Croix
explains the fall of the late Roman empire as
due primarily to gross over-extraction of
surplus, over-concentration of wealth in the
hands of the upper classes, and the
over-expansion of the bureaucratic and
military apparatus (1981 pp 502-503).  The
latter is similar to Paul Kennedy's (1987)
argument about military-economic overextension
in The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. 
This analysis implies a link between cycles of
accumulation and cycles of hegemony, to which
we will return below.  
   Equal, or perhaps even greater, analytical
emphasis is necessary on horizontal
inter-elite conflicts over apportioning
"shares" of the available social surplus. 
This struggle has its focus in the ultimate
political determination of the mode of
accumulation.  To say that the elites of
different zones of the world system share in
each others' system of exploitation and
surplus extraction through interpenetrating
accumulation, is not to deny possible
differences between these zones in terms of
the mode of accumulation.  The exchange or
transfer of social surplus both affects and is
affected by class structure.  However,
interpenetrating accumulation affects both the
producing strata and the
extracting-accumulating strata, though in
different ways.  
 
2. Transitions in Modes of Accumulation 

Perhaps the single greatest weakness in
historical materialism to date has been the
failure to theorize transitions between modes
in a world systemic context.  Traditional
Marxist interpretations of world historical
development relied heavily on a schema of
transitions between modes of production in a
predetermined unilinear progression.  This
overly simplistic framework of analysis has
long since been abandoned and revised by most
historical materialists.  We propose instead
to study transitions between modes of
accumulation.  However, they did not occur
merely within each "separate" zone of the
world system.  Rather they were the key
determinants of transition in both the "parts"
and especially the whole of the world system. 
Therefore, the research task is not to search
solely or even primarily for indigenously
generated determinants of transition between
modes, but rather to analyze the overall
interactions of each zone of the world system
with the dynamic of the entire world system. 
This is true of both the economic and the
political aspects of modes of accumulation.  
   It would also be a mistake to attempt too
strict an analytical separation between
"agrarian" and "industrial" modes of
accumulation in the world system.  Even in
very archaic phases of the world system, the
economic nexus included non-agricultural
sources of production and accumulation.  The
role of industry and commerce before the onset
of "industrialization" in the modern world
system require much more study than they have
received.  The associated social and political
relations of accumulation have changed very
significantly across world historical time,
but not in any predetermined or unilinear
progression of modes of accumulation.  The
precise nature and timing of such transitions
is still an open empirical question.  
 
3. Public/Private Accumulation 
 
In principle, there are four possible
permutations of private and public
accumulation: 

 1.  Dominant Private Accumulation (the state
"facilitates" private accumula            tion).
 2.  Dominant State Accumulation (private
accumulation "facilitates" state          
accumulation).
 3.  All Private Accumulation.  
 4.  All State Accumulation.  
 
   Type 1, dominant private accumulation, may
correspond to mercantile states and to modern
democratic states.  Type 2, dominant state
accumulation, may characterize a number of
bureaucratic states and empires as well as 
certain modern authoritarian regimes.  Type 4,
all state accumulation, might be characterized
by states such as ancient Sparta, the  Inca
empire, and some modern (state) "socialist"
states.  Type 3, all private accumulation,
raises the theoretical question of whether
private accumulation is in fact possible at
all without the state, or at least without the
presence of the state somewhere in the overall
economic nexus.  There may be niches in the
world system's economic nexus where all
private accumulation may occur, but it has
been difficult to identify instances of this. 

   State accumulation is typically
characterized by a much larger scale and much
greater potential capabilities to extract
surplus than any sole private accumulator is
capable of organizing.  That is why
"imperialism" is such an attractive means of
accumulation.  State accumulation centralizes
accumulation more than private accumulation. 
For this reason, these two modes of
accumulation and their respective elites are
locked into a perpetual conflict over
apportioning the shares of the surplus.  Both
private accumulating classes and the state
elite, as a "state-class," struggle to form a
coalition of class fractions.  Such a
"hegemonic bloc" of class fractions allows
them to cooperate to utilize the political
apparatus to establish the dominant mode of
accumulation.  The oscillation between
predominance by the private accumulators and
the state class in a social formation is a key
dimension of the cycles of accumulation,
discussed below.  
 
4. Economy/Polity Contradictions 
 
There is a contradiction between a relatively
unbounded economic nexus and a relatively
bounded political organization of this
economic nexus in world system development. 
The total economy of the major states and
centers of the world system is not under their
sole political control.  This tension is
universally recognized today as affecting the
structure of modern  capital accumulation. 
However, this phenomenon is not new.  This
economy-polity contradiction is characteristic
not only of the so-called contemporary age of
"interdependence," but has in fact always been
a factor in world system development.
   Even though since its origin the world
system has developed logistical interlinkages
that create a single overarching economic
system, the political organization of the
world system has not developed a parallel
unity.  Why is that?  For the modern world
system, Wallerstein (1974 and other works)
argues that the capitalist mode of production
structurally inhibits the creation of a single
"world-empire."  That is, in this view the
resolution of the economy/polity contradiction
in the modern world system by a single
overarching political entity is inhibited by
its capitalist mode of production.  However,
it appears that even in other modes of
accumulation, it has not been possible to
create a single political structure for the
entire world system.  Attempts to do so have
been failures.  The Mongol attempt in the 13th
century perhaps came closest to success.  The
question of why the world system has never
successfully been converted into one political
entity should be seriously posed.  The answer
may be structural, or simply a matter of
logistical and organizational limitations. 
Whatever the answer to this question about
politics in the world system, it need not deny
and may even strengthen the thesis of its
essential economic unity.  





VI.   HEGEMONY AND SUPER-HEGEMONY 
 
1. Hegemony 

Hegemony is a hierarchical structure of the
accumulation of surplus among political
entities, and their constituent classes,
mediated by force.  A hierarchy of centers of
accumulation and polities is established that
apportions a privileged share of surplus, and
the political economic power to this end, to
the hegemonic center/state and its
ruling/propertied classes.  Such a hegemonic
structure thus consists schematically of a
hierarchy of CPH complexes in which the
primary hegemonic center of accumulation and
political power subordinates secondary centers
and their respective zones of production and
accumulation.
   The rise and decline of hegemonic powers
and cycles of hegemony and war are lately
receiving increasing attention, e.g., by
Modelski (l987), Thompson (1989), Wallerstein
(1974, 1988), Wight (l978), Goldstein (l988)
and others, and even best seller status
(Kennedy 1987).  Most of these studies confine
themselves to the world system since 1500. 
However, (we argue that) the world system
began earlier and was previously centered
outside Europe.  Therefore, the same, and even
more questions, about hegemonic rise, decline,
cycles, and shifts apply - and even more
interestingly - to the larger and older world
system, prior to Europe's rise to
super-hegemonial economic and  political power
within it.  Where and when were there
hegemonic centers in the world system before
1500, and in what sense or how  did they
exercise  their hegemony?  David Wilkinson
(1989) has made a systematic study of world
states and hegemonies that could serve as the
starting point for an answer.  
   The following are some other important
questions.  As one hegemonic center declined,
was it replaced by another and which and why? 
Were there periods with various hegemonic
centers?  Did they "coexist" side by side, or
with how much systemic interconnection?  In
that case, did they complement each other, or
did they compete with each other,
economically, militarily, or otherwise until
one (new?) center achieved hegemony over the
others? Rather than continuing to look merely
comparatively at contemporary hegemonic
structures in different zones of the world
system or to investigate the dynamic of each
region separately, we must look at systemic
links among all the constituent political
organizations of the world system.  Of course,
these especially include contemporaneous
hegemonic structures.  
   Hegemony takes a variety of historical
forms.  They vary from highly  centralized
integrated bureaucratic empires, to very
loosely structured commercial or maritime
hegemonies.  In the latter, much of the
surplus is captured not via direct political
coercion, but via commodity exchange, albeit
via unequal exchange.  How and why do these
various forms of hegemony occur at particular
times and places? How do they reflect the
interests of the actors which choose them and
the prevailing conditions in the world system
at the time? 
   Given the absence in the historical record
of any single "world system hegemony," we must
look to the rise and decline of hegemonies in
each of the major zones of the world system in
order to construct an overall picture of the
hegemonial cycles, rhythms and trends in the
various regions and their possible relations. 
For instance, the oscillation between unitary
hegemonies and multi-actor states systems has
already been recognized as a key pattern of
world historical development (Mann 1986,
Wilkinson 1989).  These oscillations and the
succession of hegemonies in each part of the
world system should not be analyzed only on a
comparative basis, but from a world systemic
perspective.  Only in this way can the
dynamics of the world system's economy/polity
contradiction be more fully understood.  
   All this suggests that the primary object
and principal economic incentive of a bid for
hegemony is to restructure the overarching
system of accumulation in a way that
privileges the hegemon for capital/surplus
accumulation.  Simply put, hegemony is a means
to wealth, not merely to "power" or "order." 
That is, "power" in the world system is both
economic and political at all times.  In fact,
economic power is political power, and vice
versa.  Turning Michael Mann (1986) on his
head, the ends of power are above all control
over accumulation processes and the
determination of the dominant mode of
accumulation.  The processes of accumulation
are more fundamental to world system history
than Mann's forms of social power per se.  The
political and economic processes in the world
system are so integral as to constitute a
single process rather than two separate ones. 
Success in accumulation plays a critical role
in success in a bid for hegemony.  This is
true not only of modern states, but even of
archaic ones.  For instance, the victory of
the state of Qin in the Warring States period
in Chinese history depended greatly on its
innovations in tax structure, infrastructural
investments, bureaucratic administration, and
trade links to the world system.  All of these
gave the Qin very real advantages in
accumulation and in military capabilities over
its more traditional "feudal" rivals.  

2. Cycles of Accumulation and Hegemony 
 
The perpetual "symbiotic conflict" between
private accumulating classes and state
accumulating classes is indicative of cycles
of accumulation.  The oscillation between
unitary hegemonies and multi-actor states
systems is indicative of cycles of hegemony in
the world system.  Cycles of accumulation and
cycles of hegemony are probably causally
interrelated.  This causal inter- relationship
appears to date from very early in world
system history in various parts of the world
system.  
   These cycles and their interrelationship
are the central phenomena of the world
system's longest cumulative patterns.  These
cycles have partly been analyzed by Gills'
(1989) analysis of synchronization,
conjuncture, and center-shift in the cycles of
East Asian history.  Briefly, prior to the in-
dustrialization of production, the phase of
accumulation in which private accumulating
classes become dominant seems to be closely
associated with the decline of hegemonies and
their political fragmentation.  That is,
decentralization of accumulation affects the
decentralization of political organization. 
These processes may be called "entropic." 
Phases of accumulation in which the
bureaucratic state elite is dominant seem to
be associated with the consolidation of
hegemonies.  That is, the centralization of
accumulation affects the centralization of
political organization and vice versa. 
However, rising and declining hegemonies also
call forth opposing (and also temporarily
supporting) alliances to thwart existing and
threatening hegemonial powers.  Shifting
alliances seem to promote some kind of
"balance of power."  All this may seem
obvious, but the cyclical dynamic of hegemony
(also through political conflict and shifting
alliances) in relation to the process of
accumulation has not previously been given the
attention it deserves.  
   Implosion from the hinterland upon the
center appears to be most likely to occur in
entropic phases of the system.  The
hinterland, and perhaps the periphery, take
advantage of weakness or entropy in the center
to restructure the structure of accumulation. 
This may occur by usurping political power at
the center, or by "secession" from the center
altogether.  
   Too much attention has been given only to
the political and strategic aspects of long
cycles of war and leadership to the exclusion
of the underlying dynamics of accumulation. 
General war, as Modelski (1987) argues, does
indeed produce new sets of victors who go on
to establish a new order.  However, one should
not merely examine the political and military
aspects of these cycles.  The new victors,
without exception, also proceed to restructure
the structure of world accumulation.  This,
and not mere political realignments or "order"
alone, is the ultimate end of such general
conflict.  The intense military rivalry that
precedes hegemony may stimulate production,
but much of the economic benefit is consumed
in the process of rivalry and war.  Typically,
a new hegemony is followed by a period of
infrastructural investment and economic
expansion, which is "the hegemonic prosperity
phase" of accumulation.  A unified hegemony
usually reduces or even eliminates previous
political obstructions to the greater
integration of the economic nexus.  This has a
tremendous impact on the process of
accumulation.
   We must contemplate the existence, and
study the development of a wider world system
farther back in world history to find answers
to a host of questions about the dynamics of
states systems and cycles of accumulation and
hegemony.  Particularly important are
questions about the existence of world system
wide accumulation processes and shifts in the
centralization of accumulation from one zone
of the world system to another.  How do such
shifts affect cycles of hegemony? What are the
real patterns and "laws" of the world system's
overall expansion, transformation, and decay? 

3. Super-Hegemony 
 
The historical process of economic surplus
management and capital accumulation is so
interregional and inter-"societal" as to lead
to the conclusion that it constituted a
process of world accumulation in the world
system over the millennia.  A privileged
position therein, in which one zone of the
world system and its constituent
ruling-propertied classes is able to
accumulate surplus more effectively and
concentrate accumulation at the expense of
other zones, could be called "super-hegemony." 
Thus, super-hegemony is also a class position
in the overarching world accumulation
processes of the world system.  Thus, while
there may at one time be different hegemonic
powers in the regional subsystems, only one of
them would be "super-hegemonic" if and when it
is "more equal than the others" some of whose
accumulation it manages to channel to itself
and to centralize in its own super-hegemonic
"super-accumulation."  A research agenda is to
examine the causes of possible super-hegemony,
positional shifts from one zone to another,
and the degree to which super-hegemony is
transformed into further economic and
political power within the world system. 
While hegemony is built up of CPH complexes,
super-hegemony occurs in the largest field
possible, that of the entire world system and
all of its constituent hegemonic structures.
   Thus, super-hegemony links all the
constituent hegemonies into one overarching
systemic whole.  Of course, the degree of
institutional integration among distinct
hegemonies is not as great as the degree of
integration within each hegemony. 
Nevertheless, contemporary and/or contiguous
hegemonies are not autonomous if
inter-penetrating accumulation exists.  In the
entire class structure of the world system, in
whatever mode of accumulation, the
super-hegemonial class position is the most
privileged and the ultimate "center of
centers" in the world accumulation process.  
   To what extent did this overarching
super-hegemony rest or operate on more than
the mere outward exercise of political power
and the radiation of cultural diffusion? In
particular, to what extent and through  what
mechanisms did such overarching super-hegemony
include centralized (super-hegemonial) capital
accumulation? Was accumulation fed through the
inward flow and absorption of economic surplus
generated in and/or transferred through other
(sub)-hegemonial centers?  The answers to both
questions are in general affirmative, and we
can find ample confirmative historical
evidence if we only look for it.  For
instance, William McNeill (in conversation
with Frank) suggests that China itself
accumulated capital by absorbing surplus and
capital from the West in the several centuries
before 1500 AD.  Was China therefore
super-hegemonial? Prior to China, India was
possibly super-hegemonial in the world system. 
In the period of the eighth and ninth
centuries AD, the Abbassid Caliphate, with its
great metropole at Baghdad, may have been
super-hegemonial.  The development of European
domination over the Mughal, Qing and Ottoman
empires should, however, also be understood in
terms of the conjuncture of European expansion
and these regions' entropic phases of
accumulation and hegemony.  In the nineteenth
century, Great Britain is a candidate for
super-hegemonial status, followed by the
United States in the mid-twentieth century,
and possibly Japan in the very late twentieth
and early twenty-first century.  
   Thus, super-hegemony need not be limited
only to the capitalist world economy, but may
have existed at other times in the history of
world system development.  Super-hegemony is
more flexible than empire, or imperialism. 
Super-hegemony operates not only through
political and inter-state level(s) of
diplomacy, alliance, and war, but also and
maybe more importantly, through
super-accumulation.  
   If super-hegemony existed before recent
times, how, when and why did the
super-hegemonial center of the world system,
the most favored locus of accumulation, shift
around the world system?  What effects did
such shifts in super-hegemonial centers have
upon and what "functional" role, if any, did
they play in the world system's development? 
For instance, the super-hegemony of the
Abbassids in the eighth century was reflected
in their ability to defeat Tang China at Talas
in 751, their treaty of alliance with the Tang
in 798 AD, and their continued ability to
control Central Asia.  Perhaps the
super-hegemony of Britain contributed to its
ability to arbitrate the balance of power on
the continent of Europe and to defeat bids to
impose a unitary hegemony, such as that by
Napoleon?  The super-hegemony of the United
States after 1945 allowed it to restructure
the international order and greatly expand its
economic and military influence in the world
system.  It remains to be seen whether or how
Japan might translate super-hegemonial status
in world accumulation processes into further
political and economic power in the world
system in the twenty-first century.
 
4. Cumulation of Accumulation 
 
How long, then, has there been an overarching
and interpenetrating world system process of
capital accumulation, which affected the
structure of the structures of which it is
composed?  In other words, how long has there
been a cumulative process of capital
accumulation on a world system scale? The
(occasional and temporary) existence of 
super-hegemony also implies super accumulation
at those times, as noted above.  Even in the
absence of super-hegemony, however, the
process of accumulation in one zone of the
world system would not have been the same
without the linkages to the process of
accumulation in another zone or zones of the
world system.  Therefore, even competing
hegemonies and linked structures and processes
of accumulation could have contributed to the
world system wide cumulation of accumulation. 
Indeed, such an overarching structure of
accumulation and the resulting process of
cumulation of accumulation implies that there
may be a unitary "logic" of systemic
development.  
   The cumulation of accumulation in the world
system thus implies not only a continuous, but
also a cumulative, historical process of
ecological, economic, technological, social,
political, and cultural change.  Cumulation of
accumulation involves or requires no
uniformity among these processes throughout
the system or its parts, no unison among its
parts, no unidirectionality of change in
either the parts or the whole, and certainly
no uniformity of speed of change.  
   On the contrary, both the historical
evidence and our analysis suggest unity
through diversity (to use the phrase Mikhail
Gorbachev used at the United Nations).  The
unity of the world system and its cumulative
process of accumulation is based on the
diversity of center-periphery-hinterland, mode
of accumulation, and hegemonic differences we
have emphasized.  Of course they also rest on
the variety of social, gender, racial, ethnic,
cultural, religious, ideological and other
differences, which characterize wo/mankind. 
Historical change in both the whole (system)
and its parts takes place in many
"progressive" and "retrogressive" directions,
and not unidirectionally or even in unison
between here and there.  
   For this reason among others, historical
change also takes place and even cumulates,
not uniformly, but at changing rates,
sometimes fast, sometimes  slowly, sometimes
(degenerating)  in reverse.  Indeed, as in
physical transformations and in biological
evolution, historical change suddenly
accelerates and/or bifurcates at critical
junctures.  More than likely, contemporaries
are rarely aware that they are living and
acting in such "special" periods -- and many
who think so at other times, are not. 
Hindsight seems to throw more light on history
than foresight or even contemporary side-sight
or introspection.  Yet even historical
hindsight has a long way to go, especially in
grasping the dynamics and variability of
historical change.  We briefly return to these
problems below under the title of "dynamics." 






 
VII.  A HISTORICAL MATERIALIST POLITICAL
ECONOMY AND       RESEARCH AGENDA 
 
1. Historical Materialist Political Economic
Summary and Conclusions 

In this paper we made three key arguments. 
The first is that the world system pre-dates
the development of modern capitalism, perhaps
by several thousand years.  The second is that
accumulation processes are the most important
and fundamental processes of the world system
throughout its development.  The third
argument is that, though the mode of
accumulation underwent many historical
transformations, there has been a continuous
and cumulative process of accumulation in the
world system.  Therefore, we argue that a new
research agenda is needed to focus more
analysis on these cumulative processes of
accumulation over the entire historical
development of the world system - of some five
thousand years at least.  The secular trends,
cycles, and rhythms of the modern capitalist
world system thus become more contextually
understandable within the much longer cycles,
trends, and rhythms of the historical world
system, and particularly of its process and
cycles of accumulation.  
   We based our argument upon a new set of
criteria for defining what constitutes a
"systemic" interaction.  The transfer or
exchange of economic surplus is the
fundamental criterion of a world systemic
relationship.  Diplomacy, alliances and
conflict are additional, and perhaps
derivative, criteria of systemic interaction. 
Thus, we introduced the criterion of
"interpenetrating accumulation" into the
definition of the world system.  By applying
these criteria we saw the origins of the world
system recede by several millennia.  The world
system had its ultimate origins in the
development of an archaic Asio-Afro-European
economic and political nexus, which first
developed in the area now known as West Asia,
the Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean
about 2500 BC.  Once in existence, this world
system continued to develop, expand, and
deepen.  It eventually either assimilated
and/or merged with all other center-periphery-
hinterland zones to form our modern world
system.  Its relatively unbounded economic
nexus is perpetually in contradiction with a
more bounded political organization of the
economic nexus.  Cycles of accumulation and
cycles of hegemony, like center-periphery-
hinterland relations, have characterized the
world system and its subsystems from its
inception.  
   World system history forms a genuine
continuum within which cycles of accumulation
and cycles of hegemony are the two most
fundamental phenomena.  These two cyclical
phenomena are intercausally systemically
interrelated to one another.  They are the
basis of our assertion that there are
cumulative accumulation processes in the world
system over such an extended time frame.  
   Significant aspects of our argument were
anticipated - alas, without our taking due
note thereof - by Kajsa Ekholm and Jonathan
Friedman (E & F) under the title "'Capital
Imperialism and Exploitation in Ancient World
Systems" a decade ago (1982, original 1979). 
It may be useful briefly to review some major
points of agreement and disagreement with
them.

1. Emergence and development of the World
system.  E & F argue that  

      Our point of departure is that the
   forerunner of the present kind of world
   system first emerged in the period
   following 3000 B.C. in Southern
   Mesopotamia.  Here we can describe the
   first example of the rise of a center of
   accumulation within a larger economic
   system and the development of an
   imperialist structure....the expansion
   of the E.D. [Early Dynastic] system
   eventually incorporates the entire
   region from the Indus to the
   Mediterranean in a regular trade
   network....(89, 97).

   Our argument is that the general
   properties of imperialist-mercantilist
   expansion are common to ancient and
   modern worlds irrespective of specific
   local forms of accumulation (92).

   We agree that the world system began long
before "the modern world system," and we also
see its emergence in Mesopotamia.  However, in
our view the formation of the world system was
more the result of interregional relations
between Mesopotamia and other regions in the
"Middle East" and the Indus Valley.  We also
agree that the world system then expanded and
took on certain  "general properties,"  which
still define it today (see below).

2. Capital Accumulation.  E & F and we agree
on the centrality of capital accumulation in
this long historical process and system(s) and
that "capital" exists not only under "capitalism."

   The accumulation of capital as a form of
   abstract wealth is a truly  ancient
   phenomenon.... "Capital" is not tied to
   a specific form of exploitation.  It is,
   rather, the forerunner, or perhaps
   identical to, merchant capital in its
   functioning....(pp. 88, 100).

However, E & F define capital as:

   ...the form of abstract wealth
   represented in the concrete form of
   metal or even money that can be
   accumulated in  itself and converted
   into other forms of wealth, land, labor,
   and products (p. 100).

   Our concepts of capital and its
accumulation are broader than theirs.  We
stress the existence and combination of both
state and private capital, and we include non-
monetary forms of the production, extraction,
transfer, and accumulation of surplus.  We
also pay more attention than they do to the
interregional dimensions of accumulation and
supra regional super accumulation.  Moreover,
we stress  the cumulative, albeit cyclical,
process of capital accumulation -- which also
contributes to continuity in the world system. 


3. Center-periphery Structure(s).  E & F, like
we, argue that

      The system to which we refer is
   characterized, not only by an
   accumulation of capital, but by the
   emergence of an imperialist pattern:
   center/periphery structures are unstable
   over time; centers expand, contract, and
   collapse as regular manifestations of
   the shift of points of accumulation. 
   These phenomena are, we think, more
   general than modern capitalism....(88).

   We agree, but our CPH complex extends this
center-periphery structure to include the
hinterland, when it also contributes to
accumulation in the center and to
transformation in the system as a whole. 
Moreover again, we stress the  systemic
relations among various CPH complexes, which
make up the world system as a whole.

4. Economy/Polity Contradictions, Hegemony and
System Transformation.  E & F and we agree
that systemic economic relations tend to be
more extensive than political ones.

   The existence of a production/resource
   area wider than that of a political unit
   which must be maintained is the
   fundamental weakness of such systems
   (93).

This contradiction gives rise to instability
in and transformation of the system:

   Center/periphery structures are
   drastically unstable because of the
   vulnerability of the centers in the
   external (supply/market) realm which is
   so difficult to control....Evolution is,
   as a result, a necessarily discontinuous
   process in space.  Centers collapse and
   are replaced by other areas of high
   civilization.  The development of total
   systems is not equivalent to the
   development of individual societies.  On
   the contrary, the evolution tends to
   imply the shift of centers of
   accumulation over time....(93). 

   Again, we agree; but we discuss these
relations and transformations as cycles of
hegemony.  We also relate hegemony to the
center-periphery complex and to accumulation
within it.  However, we also urge the study of
possible overarching system-wide super-
accumulation and super-hegemony.

5. World systems or World system?  E & F seem
to be unsure about which it is.  Elsewhere,
they definitely say systems, (eg Ekholm 1980). 
Here E & F say:

   Our point has been to stress the
   fundamental continuity between ancient
   and modern world- systems.... We are,
   perhaps talking about the same world
   system.  The forms of accumulation have
   not changed so significantly.  The forms
   of exploitation and oppression have all
   been around from the earliest
   civilization although, of course, they
   have existed in different proportions
   and varying combinations....There are,
   to be sure, a great many differences,
   but the similarities are, perhaps, a
   more serious and practical problem (105,
   106).
  
   That is our point as well.  However, we now
wish to stress the fundamental similarity and
continuity not so much between ancient and
modern world systems.  We are definitely
talking about common characteristics and 
continuity within the same world system. 
   Therefore, there is good reason,
justification, and merit to do an historical
materialist political economy of world system
history.  Almost all historical and (other)
social scientific analysis of the world and
its parts before 1500 AD (and most of them for
the time since then also) have neglected these
systemic aspects of world historical political
economic processes and relations.  Some
scholars (e.g., Tilly 1984) have considered
doing such a world system history and have
rejected the task as inadvisable or
impossible.  Others, like Farmer (1977, 1985),
Chase-Dunn (1986), Ekholm (1980), and Ekholm
and Friedman (1982) have started down this
road, but have apparently taken fright and
stopped or even turned back.  A few scholars,
especially Childe (1942), McNeill (1964,
1990), Stavarianos (1970), and most recently
Wilkinson (1987, 1989) have made pioneering
advances toward writing a world system
history.  Frank (1990) examines their and many
other theoretical and historical
considerations and rejects their reservations
as unfounded.  He then proposes why and how
these and other pioneering works should be
extended and combined to do a history of the
world and its world systemic historical
materialist political economy along the
present lines.  
 
2. Political, Economic and Cultural Three
Legged Stools 
 
A historical materialist political economy of
cumulation of accumulation in world system
history does not exclude or even downgrade
social, political, cultural, ideological, and
other factors.  On the contrary, it relates
and integrates them with each other.  Nor need
such a study be "economic determinist."  On
the contrary, this study would recognize the
interaction  and support of at least three
legs of the social stool, without which it
could not stand, let alone develop.  These
three legs are: the organization of political
power; the identity and legitimation through
culture and ideology; and the management of
economic surplus and capital accumulation
through a complex division of labor.  Each of
these is related to the other and all of them
to the system as a whole and its
transformation.  
   A historical materialist political economic
analysis of the historical development of this
world system should incorporate ecological,
biological, cultural, ideological, and of
course political factors and relations.  Thus,
there is justification and merit in also
seeking to explain many political institutions
and events and their ideological
manifestations through the ecological and
economic incentives and limitations that
accompany if not determine them.  In
particular, we should pay much more attention
to how the generation and capture of economic
surplus helps shape social and political
institutions, military campaigns, and
ideological legitimation.  Economic
institutions, such as Polanyi's (1957) famous
reciprocity, redistribution and market, appear
mixed up with each other and  always with some
political organization.  Many political
institutions and processes also have economic
aspects or "functions." 
   The three component aspects, the three legs
of the stool, are embedded in the mode of
accumulation.  No mode of accumulation can
function without a concomitant ideology of
accumulation; an economic nexus founded on a
complex division of labor in which class
relations facilitate extraction of surplus;
and finally a political apparatus, which
enforces the rules and relations of
accumulation through the ultimate sanction of
"legitimate" coercion.  The ideology and
political apparatus are integral aspects of
the mode of accumulation.  They are not super
- structurally "autonomous" from each other or
from the characteristics of the economic
nexus.  However, ideology and political
competition and emulation sometimes appear to
take on at least a semi-autonomous character. 
Even if we grant this, it does not invalidate
the alternative assertion that overall they
are not autonomous from the economic nexus.  
   We reject any vulgar unidirectional schema
of causality whereby the economic nexus must
necessarily determine the ideology and
political apparatus of a mode of accumulation
because they are not in fact separate.  We
suggest an alternative concept of the mutual
inter-causality among the three aspects of a
mode of accumulation which is historically
specific to each case.  Indeed, particularly
in periods of transition between one mode of
accumulation and another, ideological and
political forces can play an extremely
significant role in determining the structure
of the economic nexus that emerges from the
transition.  It is in these periods especially
that broad based social movements intercede in
world (and local) history.  These social
movements are often neglected altogether, or
they are considered but not sufficiently
analyzed in their structural and temporal
world systemic context.  We can well depart
from vulgar economism, but not necessarily
from a form of "economic" determinism, if by
economic we mean giving the political economic
processes of accumulation their due.

3. Analytic and Research Agendas on the
Structure and Dynamics of           World system
history.
 
Most important perhaps are the dynamics of the
world system, that is how the world system
itself operates, behaves/functions, and
transforms (itself?).  Are there trends,
cycles, internal mechanisms of transformation
in the pre-(and post-) 1500 world system? 
When and why does historical change accelerate
and decelerate?  What are the historical
junctures at which quantitative turns into
qualitative change?  What are the bifurcations
at which historical change takes one direction
rather than another.  And why?  Perhaps
general systems theory offers some answers or
at least better questions also for this
(world) system.  For instance, Prigogine and
Sanglier(1988) analyze how order is formed out
of chaos, and how at critical times and places
small changes can spark large alterations and
transformations in physical, biological,
ecological and social systems.  
   Recent studies by, for instance, Ekholm and
Friedman (1982), Chase-Dunn (1986), and others
are looking into both structural and dynamic
properties of partial "world" systems before
1500.  However, it may be possible to trace
long (and within them shorter) cycles of
accumulation, infrastructural investment,
technological change, and hegemony much
farther back in world system history.  Not
only may they have  existed, but they may
often have had considerable relative
independent autonomy from policy and politics
per se.  Indeed as in more recent times also,
much of this policy was, and is, instead more
the effect of and response to largely
uncontrolled cyclical changes.  Moreover,
policy tends to reinforce more than to
counteract these cycles and trends.  This
cyclical process and policy response may be
seen in the decline of various empires,
including the present American one.  
   In particular, to what extent has the
process of capital accumulation and associated
other developments been cyclical?  That is,
were there identifiable subsystemic and
system-wide acceleration/deceleration,
up/down, swings in structure  and process? And
were any such swings cyclical, that is
endogenous to the system, in the sense that up
generated down and down occasioned up again? 
This kind of question has been posed, and some
answers have been offered for the world system
(or its different economic and political 
interpretations) since 1500.  For instance,
Wallerstein (l974) and Frank (l978) find long
cycles in economic growth and technology. 
Modelski (l987) and Goldstein (l988) find long
cycles in political hegemony and war. 
Wallerstein also posits a life cycle of
expansion  and foreseen decay of the system. 
Toynbee (l973), Quigley (l961), Eisenstadt
(1963), and others have made comparative
studies of the life cycles of individual
civilizations before 1500.  So have
archaeologists like Robert M. Adams (1966). 
But to what extent were there also world
system wide fluctuations and cycles, and what
role have they played in the transformation
and development of the world system? 
   Infrastructural investment apparently
occurs in cyclical or phased  patterns,  and 
in  direct correspondence with the cycle/phase
of accumulation and of hegemony.  Newly formed
hegemonic orders are usually associated with a
subsequent intense phase of infrastructural
investment, followed by general economic
expansion and a concomitant increase in
accumulation.  Therefore, it could also be
fruitful to search for a long lasting
continuous up and down cycle of
super-hegemony.  
   Thus, infrastructural investment cycles
would be related to cycles of accumulation and
cycles of hegemony in the world system.  Are
there also cumulative aspects of
infrastructural investment that affect
subsequent world system development?  We
incline to an affirmative answer.  However, we
do not believe that this cumulation
necessarily takes place in or through a single
"capital-imperialist" mode of production, and
still less one based on the primary use of a
political apparatus to exercise imperial
political power for this accumulation, as
apparently posited by Ekholm and Friedman
(1982).  Other competitive "economic"
mechanisms operating within the very CPH and
hegemonic structure of the world system can
also further the process of cumulation in the
world system.  How did private and state
investment interact in world system
development?  For instance, what is the role
of private infrastructural investment in
creating and sustaining the complex logistical
interlinkages of the world system?  To what
extent does state infrastructural investment
create and sustain the logistical
interlinkages of the world system? How does
the conjuncture and synchronization of phases
among contemporary hegemonies affect the
respective cycles of infrastructural
investment? 
   If we view the entire five or six millennia
development of the world system as a unified
cumulative continuum and seek to explain its
most significant trends, cycles, and rhythms,
based on an historical materialist political
economy, then a "world system history" should
follow.  Such a world system history should
not merely be a comparative history of the
world or even a comparative history of world
systems.  An historical materialist world
system history would regard class formation,
capital accumulation, state formation, and
hegemonic construction throughout the world
system as being integral aspects of the one,
cumulative, process of world historical world
system accumulation and development.  This
history would not be Eurocentric, and should
avoid any other form of centricism.  A
comprehensive world system history would be
humanocentric.  
   We mean humanocentric in two senses.  One
is that world history must encompass the
structure  and development of the system,
which importantly determines the lives of all
humanity, and not just a (self)selected part
of it. Second, world (system) history should
leave room for how people shape their own and 
world history.  Most history is written top
down by and/or for the victors in historical
struggles.  Of course, the hierarchical and
center-periphery structure  and mechanisms of
social transformation in the system merit
attention, as we have emphasized.  However,
human history and the world system itself 
also emerges out of multiple bottom up social
movements and other struggles.  Some were
successful in their time and place.  Many were
defeated.  Both intervened in forming and
transforming world system history.  More
specifically, popular dissatisfaction and its
socio-political expression helped shape and
transform societies and empires from reform
movements in ancient Sumer and peasant
uprisings in "dynastic cycle" China to today. 
The scholarly difficulty of incorporating
these social movements into a world system
history is only exceeded by the political
importance of doing so.  Yet we must try;
since it is the very structure and development
of the world system, which (cyclically?)
generates and continually regenerates the
social (movement) and other struggles -- and
vice versa.  A Luta Continua!


                      REFERENCES
 
Adams, Brooks 1943. The Law of Civilization
and Decay: An Essay on History.           New York:
Alfred A. Knopf.
Adams, Robert Mc 1966. The Evolution of Urban
Society: Early Mesopotamia          and Prehistoric
Mexico. Chicago: Aldine Co.
Amin, Samir 1989. "Le System Mondial
Contemporain Et Les Systemes
   Anterieurs," Unpublished Manuscript.  
Arrighi, Giovanni and Jessica Drangel 1986.
"The Stratification of the World-         Economy: An
Exploration of the Semiperipheral Zone."
Review      X:1(Summer):9-74.
Chase-Dunn, Christopher 1986. "Rise and
Demise: World-Systems and Modes           of
Production," Unpublished Manuscript. 
Childe, Gordon 1942. What Happened in History?
Harmondsworth, Middlesex: 
   Pelican.  
______ 1951. Man Makes Himself. New York:
Mentor. de Ste Croix, G.E.M.        1981. The Class
Struggle in the Ancient Greek World.
   London: Duckworth.  
Curtin, Philip 1984. Cross-cultural Trade in
World History. Cambridge:
   Cambridge University Press.
Eberhard, Wolfram 1977. A History of China.
Fourth revised Edition. London:           Routledge
Keagan Paul.  
Eisenstadt, S.N. 1963. The Political Systems
of Empires. Glencoe, Illinois: The              Free
Press.  
Ekholm, Kasja 1980. "On the Limitations of
Civilization: The Structure and
   Dynamics of Global Systems." Dialectical
Anthropology. 5:2(July):155-        166.
Ekholm, Kasja and Jonathan Friedman 1982.
"'Capital' Imperialism and
   Exploitation in Ancient World-Systems".
Review IV:1(Summer):87-109.
Farmer, Edward L. 1985. "Civilization as a
Unit of World History: Eurasia            and
Eurasia's Place in it." The History Teacher.
Vol 18, No. 3, May.  
______ et al 1977. Comparative History of
Civilization in Asia. Reading, Mass:            
Addison-Wesley.  
Frank, Andre Gunder 1978 a. World Accumulation
1492-1789. New York:          Monthly Review Press
and London: Macmillan Press.
______ 1978 b. Dependent Accumulation and
Underdevelopment. New York:         Monthly Review
Press and London: Macmillan Press.  
______ 1981. Crisis: In the Third World. New
York: Holmes and Meier, and         London:
Heinemann.
______ 1990. "A Theoretical Introduction to
Five Thousand Years of World        system History."
Review 13:2(Spring):155-250.
Gernet, Jacques 1985. A History of Chinese
Civilization. Cambridge:
   Cambridge University Press.
Gills, Barry K. 1989. "Synchronization,
Conjuncture and Center-Shift in East            Asian
International History", paper presented at the
joint International           Studies Association,
British International Studies Association
Conference,       London, 1 April 1989.
Gilpin, Robert 1981. War and Change in World
Politics. Cambridge: Cam      bridge University
Press.  
Goldstein, Joshua 1988. Long Cycles:
Prosperity and War in the Modern Age.
   New Haven: Yale University Press.  
Hall, Thomas D. 1986. "Incorporation in the
World-system: Toward a
   Critique" American Sociological Review
51:3(June):390-402.  
______ 1989. Social Change in the Southwest,
1350-1880. Lawrence, KS:            University Press
of Kansas
Johnstone, Paul 1989. The Seacraft of
Prehistory. London: Routledge.
Kennedy, Paul 1987. The Rise and Fall of the
Great Powers. New York:       Random House.
Lattimore, Owen 1940. Inner Asian Frontiers of
China. Boston: Beacon Press.
______ 1962. Studies in Frontier History:
Collected Papers 1928-1958. Oxford:             Oxford
University Press.  
Mann, Michael 1986. The Sources of Social
Power, Volume 1: A History of             Power from
the beginning to AD 1760. Cambridge: Cambridge
University        Press.
McNeill, William H. 1964. The Rise of the
West. A History of the Human        Community.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.  
______ 1982. The Pursuit of Power: Technology,
Armed Force and Society since             AD 1000.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
______ 1990. "The Rise of the West After
Twenty Five Years", Journal of            World
History. 1:1(Spring):1-21.
Modelski, George 1987. Long Cycles in World
Politics. London: Macmillan
   Press.
Prigogine, Ilya and Michele Sanglier eds.
1988. Laws of Nature and Human
   Conduct: Specificities and Unifying themes.
Bruxelles:
Polanyi, Karl 1957. The Great Transformation -
The Political and Economic
   Origins of Our Time. Boston: The Beacon
Press.  
Quigley, Carroll 1961. The Evolution of
Civilizations. An Introduction to
   Historical Analysis. New York: Macmillan Co.
Rowlands, Michael, Mogens Larsen and Kristian
Kristiansen, eds. 1987.             Centre and
Periphery in the Ancient World. Cambridge:
Cambridge         University Press.
Schneider, Jane 1977. "Was there a
pre-capitalist world-system?" Peasant
   Studies VI:1(January):20-29.
Stavrianos, L.S. 1970. The World to 1500: A
Global History. Englewood
   Cliffs: Prentice Hall.
Teggart, Frederick J. 1939. Rome and China: A
Study of Correlations in
   Historical Events. Berkeley: University of
California Press.  
Thompson, William 1989. On Global War:
Historical-Structural Approaches          to World
Politics. Columbia: University of South
Carolina Press.  
Tilly, Charles 1984. Big Structures, Large
Processes, Huge Comparisons. New          York:
Russell Sage Foundation.  
Toynbee, Arnold 1973. A Study of History.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.  Wallerstein,
Immanuel 1974. The Modern World-System. Vol 1.
New York:
   Academic Books.
______ 1988. The Modern World-system III. New
York: Academic Books.  
______ 1989. "The West, Capitalism, and the
Modern World-System,"         Prepared as a chapter
of Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in
   China, Vol. VII: The Social Background,
Part 2, Sect. 48. Social and        Economic
Considerations.
Wight, Martin 1978. Power Politics. New York:
Holmes/Meier.  
Wilkinson, David 1987. "Central Civilization."
Comparative Civilizations
   Review 17(Fall):31-59. 
______ 1989. "The Future of the World State:
From Civilization Theory to         World Politics",
Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the
Interna     tional Studies Association, London,
March 28-April 1, 1989.
Wolf, Eric 1982. Europe and the People Without
History. Berkeley:University of           California
Press.