4 Cores, Peripheries, and Civilizations David Wilkinson The terminology of "core" and "periphery" allows us to address substantive issues of interest to the study of world politics, of world systems, and of civilizations: issues of geographic differentiation, inequality, and uneven change. Power, pelf, prestige, prog- ress, population and piety are significantly centric: spatially located, concentrated, radiating outwards, radially diminishing. To some degree, but not completely, their spatial distributions overlap, creating the sense of historic "cores" for macrosocieties; at some timescales, cores seem stable, at some longer scales they move in apparently nonrandom ways. Reprise. This is one in a series of papers exploring the relationship of civilizations theory to world politics. In this series (e.g., Wilkinson, 1987) I have defined "a civilization" using criteria of level-and- politicomilitary-connectedness rather than the more customary criteria of level-and- cultural-uniformity. Screening a list of some seventy candidates yielded a list of fourteen entities which appeared to be societies at a civilized level (criteria: cities, record- keeping, economic surplus, non-producing classes, etc.) which were also connected world-systems -- militarily closed, geotechno- logically isolated social-transactional net- works with an autonomous political history during which they did not take or need not have taken much account of the possibility of conquest, invasion, attack -- or alliance and cooperation -- from any outsiders, although the members of each such system did recurrent- ly conquer, invade, attack, ally with, com- mand, rule, legislate, cooperate with, and conflict significantly and effectively with (and only with) one another. Table 1 gives the resulting roster of civilizations/world systems. Table 1. A Roster of Fourteen Civilizations (listed in their approximate order of incorporation into Central Civiliza- tion) CivilizationDuration Terminus 1. Mesopotamian before 3000 B.C. - c. 1500 B.C.Coupled with Egyptian to form Central 2. Egyptianbefore 3100 B.C. - c. 1500 B.C.Coupled with Mesopotamian to form Central 3. Aegeanc. 2700 B.C. - c. 560 B.C.Engulfed by Central 4. Indic c. 2300 B.C. - after c. A.D. 1000Engulfed by Central 5. Irish c. A.D. 450 - c. 1050 Engulfed by Central 6. Mexicanbefore 1100 B.C. - c. A.D. 1520Engulfed by Central 7. Peruvianbefore c. 200 B.C. - c. A.D. 1530Engulfed by Central 8. Chibchan? - c. A.D. 1530 Engulfed by Central 9. Indonesianbefore A.D. 700 - c. 1700Engulfed by Central 10. West Africanc. A.D. 350 - c. 1590 Engulfed by Central 11. Mississippianc. A.D. 700 - c. 1700 Destroyed (Pestilence?) 12. Far Easternbefore 1500 B.C. - after c. A.D. 1850Engulfed by Central 13. Japanesec. A.D. 650 - after c. 1850Engulfed by Central 14. Centralc. 1500 B.C. - present ? Figure 1 is a chronogram showing the lifespans and relative (Mercator) locations of the civilizations in the roster. The most striking effect of the new defini- tion on accustomed lists of civilizations is that such accustomed entities as Classical- Hellenic/Greco-Roman civilization, Hittite civilization, Arab- ian/Magian/Syriac/Iranic/Islamic civiliza- tion(s), Orthodox Christian civilization, Russian civilization, and even our own famil- iar Western civilization, must be reclassified either as episodes of or as regions within a previously unrecognized social-network entity, by my definition both a civilized society and a world system, hence a single civilization. This civilization I have labeled Central civilization. Central civilization was created in the Middle East during the 2nd millennium B.C. by an atypical encounter between two pre-existing civilizations. Civilizations may coexist, collide, break apart or fuse; when they have fused, they have typically done so by an asymmetric, inegalitarian engulfment of one by the other. But the linking of the previously separate Egyptian and Mesopotamian civiliza- tions through Syria was an atypical, relative- ly symmetric and egalitarian "coupling" which created a new joint network-entity rather than annexing one network as a part of the other entrained to its process time. The new Cen- tral network, in an unbroken existence and process since then, has been atypical in another way: it has expanded, slowly by the reckoning of national and state turnover times, but quite rapidly by comparison to other civilizations, and in that expansion has engulfed all the other civilizational networks with which it once coexisted and later collid- ed. Now expanded to global scale, Central civilization constitutes the single contem- porary instance of the species "civilization." Figure 1 shows "Greco-Roman" and "Western" as epochs of regional dominance within Central civilization; these dominant regions in fact constituted long-lived, but impermanent, cores of Central civilization. The Near Eastern, Medieval and global phases of Central civili- zation also possessed cores, but they were larger and less culturally homogeneous than the Greco-Roman and Western cores. Civilizations considered in their political aspect (and as world systems, in their world- political aspect) ordinarily have one or the other of two political structures: the states system (= state system = multi-state system = system of many independent states) and the universal empire (= universal state = world state = one-state system). Figure 2 is the chronogram from Figure 1, complicated by symbolization of the states-system periods, the epochs of universal empire, and the cur- rently unclassifiable eras of each civiliza- tion. About twenty-three universal empires and about twenty-eight states systems may be identified. The universal empires of the fourteen civili- zations are listed in Table 2 (see also Wilk- inson, 1988), the states systems in Table 3. Table 2. The World States of the Fourteen Civilizations CivilizationState Span Duration 1. Mesopotamiana. Akkadianc. 2350 - c. 2230 B.C.120 b. Third Dynastyc. 2050 - c. 1960 B.C. 90 of Ur c. Babylonianc. 1728 - c. 1686 B.C. 42 2. Egyptiana. Old Kingdomc. 2850 - c. 2180 B.C.670 b. Middle Kingdomc. 1991 - c. 1786 B.C.205 c. New Kingdomc. 1570 - c. 1525 B.C. 45 3. Aegeana. Minoan c. 1570 - c. 1425 B.C.145 4. Indic a. Maurya c. 262 - c. 231 B.C. 31 5. Irish None? 6. Mexicana. Aztec c. A.D. 1496 - 1519 23 7. Peruviana. Inca c. 1470 - 1533 63 8. Chibchan None? 9. Indonesiana. Srivijayac. A.D. 695 - late 13th C.600 b. MadjapahitA.D. 1293 - 1389 96 10. West Africana. Ghana c. A.D. 950 ? b. Mali c. A.D. 1330 ? c. Songhai c. A.D. 1500 ? 11. Mississippian None? 12. Far Easterna. Ch'in-Han221 B.C. - A.D. 184405 b. Sui-TangA.D. 589 - 750161 c. Mongol-Ming-A.D. 1279 - 1850571 Manchu 13. Japanesea. Taiho A.D. 702 - 1336634 b. Hideyoshi-A.D. 1590 - 1868 278 Tokugawa 14. Central Near Easterna. Neo-Assyrian663 - 652 B.C. 11 Phase b. Persian-525 - 316 B.C.209 Macedonian Greco-Romanc. Roman 20 B.C. - A.D. 235 255 Phase Table 3. The States Systems of the Fourteen Civilizations CivilizationStates SystemsNotable StatesDuration 1. MesopotamianA. Pre-SargonidUruk, Kish, Nippur, Ur, Lagash, ? to c. 2350 B.C. Umma, Elam, Mari, Agade B. Pre-Urnammu Agade, Guti, Erech, Ur, Lagash, 180 c. 2230 - c. 2050 B.C. Uruk, Elam, Assyria Table 3. Continued CivilizationStates SystemsNotable StatesDuration 1. MesopotamianC. Pre-Hammurabic Ur, Uruk, Isin, Elam, Lagash, 232 (continued) c. 1960 - c. 1728 B.C. Eshnunna, Larsa, Babylon, Mari, Kassites, Assyria D. Post-HammurabicBabylon, Sea Lands, Kassites, ___ c. 1686 - c. 1500 B.C. Hittites (becomes 14A) 2. EgyptianA. Pre-NarmerUpper Egypt, Lower Egypt ? to c. 2850 B.C. B. First IntermediateHeracleopolis, Thebes 189 c. 2180 - c. 1991 B.C. C. Second IntermediateThebes, Xois, Avaris 216 c. 1786 - c. 1570 B.C. 3. Aegean(A. Pre- Thalassocracy(Knossos, Phaistos, Mallia?) ___ to c. 1570 B.C.?) B. Post-ThalassocracyMycenae, Knossos, Pylos, ___ c. 1425 - c. 560 B.C. Troy, Athens, Thebes, (merging into 14A) Tiryns, Miletus, Samos, Sparta, Corinth, Phrygia, Lydia 4. Indic A. Pre-Asoka Maghada, Kosala, Ujjain, ? to c. 262 B.C. Vamsas, Kalinga B. Pre-Engulfment Maghada, Bactria, Sakas, 1231 c. 231 B.C. - Kushana, Andhra, Kanauj, Palas, c. A.D. 1000 Gurjara-Prathiharas, Pallavas, Chalukyas, Pandyas, Rashtrakutas, Cholas, Ghaznavids 5. Irish (A. Pre-Engulfment (Tara, Dublin, Munster, ? to c. A.D. 1050?) Ulster, Connaught?) 6. MexicanA. Pre-Montezuma Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, ? to c. 1496 Tlacopan, Azcapotzalco, Mixtecs, Zapotecs, Tarascans, Tlaxcala 7. PeruvianA. Pre-Huayna CapacCuzco, Charcas, Chimu, Quito ? to c. 1470 8. Chibchan(A. Pre-Engulfment(Tunja, Bacata?) ? to c. 1530?) 9. IndonesianA. Pre-SrivijayanSrivijaya, Malayu, Kalah ? to c. A.D. 695 B. Pre-Madjapahit Srivijaya, Singosari, ? (late 13th C. A.D.) Madjapahit C. Pre-Engulfment Madjapahit, numerous Malay ___ c. 1389 - c. 1550 States Table 3. Continued CivilizationStates SystemsNotable StatesDuration 10. West AfricanA. Pre-Ghana Ghana, Songhai ? to 10th C. A.D.? B. Pre-Mali Diara, Soso, Mossi, Manding, ? 11th C. A.D. - 1325 Songhai C. Pre-Songhai Manding, Songhai, Tuaregs 60? A.D. 1433 - 1493 11. Mississippian(A. Pre-Natchez?) ? (B. Post-Natchez?) ? 12. Far EasternA. Pre-Ch'inCh'in, Chin, Han, Chao, Wei, 550 771 - 221 B.C. Ch'u, Ch'i, Lu, Sung, Yen B. Pre-Sui 3 Kingdoms, W. Chin, 6 174 A.D. 184 - 589 Dynasties, 16 Kingdoms, N. Wei, E. Wei, W. Wei, N. Ch'i, N. Chou, S. Ch'en, Sui, Annam, Champa, Nan-Chao, Tu-yu-hun C. Pre-Mongol Uighurs, Tufan, Nan-chao, 5 529 A.D. 750 - 1279 Dynasties, 10 Kingdoms, Khitans, (Liao), Hsi-Hsia, N. Sung, Jurchen, (Ch'in), Ch'i, S. Sung, Annam, Khmer, Champa, Wu Yueh, Mongols, Koryo 13. JapaneseA. Pre-Taiho Koguryo, Paekche, Silla, Imna, 402 c. A.D. 300 - 702 Yamato B. Pre-Hideyoshi Ashikaga, Yoshino, Enryakuji, 254 c. A.D. 1336 - 1590 Ikko, Various daimyo 14. CentralA. Pre-AssurbanapalEgypt, Mitanni, Hittites, Elam, 837 c. 1500 - 663 B.C. Babylon, Assyria, Urartu, Damascus, Israel, Tyre, Judah, Ethiopia, Media, Nubia B. Pre-Darius Assyria, Armenia, Elam, 127 652-525 B.C. Babylonia, Media, Anshan, Persia, Lydia, Egypt, Libya, Ionia, Judah, Tyre, Meroe C. Pre-AugustanSyracuse, Carthage, 296 316 - 20 B.C. Macedonia, Rome, Seleucids, Egypt, Pontus, Armenia, Parthia D. Post-Roman A.D. 235 - presentRome, Persia, Byzantium, 1750+ Arab Caliphate, Frankish Empire, Holy Roman Empire, Mongol Khanate, Ottoman Sultanate, Spain, Austria, France, Britain, Germany, Japan, Russia, America Both universal empires and states systems ordinarily have cores. The core in a univer- sal empire will usually be the metropolitan territory and people which conquered, united and governed the world system; the core in a states system will ordinarily include its great-power oligarchy. Terminology and assumptions. At this point, it seems useful to stipulate some definitions, which will in due course become issues, since definitions contain the bones of revered but unnamed ancestral theories, and disturb the spirits rendered thereby non- ancestral. In this case the terminology offered will contain and embody explicit theoretical assumptions, which (being assump- tions) will be expounded, but not defended. An ideal-type civilization / world-system / macrosociety, because its characteristics are unequally distributed over space; and, because they are distributed centrically; and, because their unequal distributions overlap; and, because the inequalities are connected intrin- sically to its past history of expansion (for civilizations tend strongly to expand, Central civilization being an extreme rather than an exceptional case) characteristically possess- es: (1) a core (central, older, ad- vanced, wealthy, powerful) (2) a semiperiphery strongly con- nected to the core (younger, fring- eward, remote, more recently attached, weaker, poorer, more backward), and (3) a weakly connected periphery (nomads; peasant subsistence pro- ducers not yet attached to a city; and other civilizations that trade but do not habitually fight or ally with the subject civilization). Civilizations usually begin in a geographi- cally restricted area composed of cities and the hinterlands their fighters can control; this is surrounded by an area to which the new cities are politically irrelevant. We may call these zones the (initial) urban core, controlled semiperiphery, and uncontrolled periphery of the civilization. Civilizations usually expand over time by raiding, invading and conquering adjacent areas; and by sending out colony-cities and military settlements and trading forts; and by fascinating and addicting previously indiffer- ent peripheral people to their products (gods, drugs, laws, weapons, music, ornaments, com- modities, etc.). The territories affected by this civic expansion -- whether the expansion be colonialist, imperialist, cultic, develop- mental -- may be considered to have been incorporated by the civilization when their occupants -- settlers or settlees -- undergo urbanization and begin to interact politically on a regular basis -- as subjects, allies, tributaries, enemies -- with the civilization- al core. This area of later expansion and control is the (enlarged) semiperiphery of the civilization. Once a semiperiphery exists, and it comes to exist quickly, it also persists. Thus one of the main continuing patterns that reveals itself in the history of civilizations and world systems is that they tend -- not by definition, but empirically -- to be markedly geographically tripartite. In the core, military force, political power, economic wealth, technological progress, cultural prestige, and theogony are concentrated. The periphery is far from the core in all senses, containing peoples and territories known but scarcely noted. The semiperiphery, more or less recently penetrated or engulfed, is a zone characterized by military subjection, powerlessness, relative poverty, technological backwardness, and low cultural prestige. But while the tripartition of a civiliza- tion is very durable, no area has permanent tenure in any role, and tenure of coredom is rather precarious. The global civilization of today, which expanded from a Mesopotamian- Egyptian core, is not ruled from Uruk, nor from Egyptian Thebes; the lobbyists of the world do not seek favors in Agade, nor do its engineers and physicians study in an Imhotep institute of Gizeh; there are no great powers based in the Fertile Crescent; Babylon is not the world's Hollywood; Amon's devotees are few. Cores are not eternal; civilizations can outlast their origi-nal cores. A history of cores must therefore be kinematic, describing their rises, shifts and falls; a theory of cores must ultimately be dynamic, accounting for their motion and change. A theory of peripheries must largely ac- count for their secular decline. Civilization as such -- the sum of the territories and peoples of the various civilizations -- has expanded continually since its origins, de- spite some regional setbacks and a single holocivilizational collapse (that of Missis- sippian civilization), by conquering and colonizing and assimilating its non-civilized peripheral peoples and territories. This contradicts the idea that civilizations rise and fall, rise and fall: they almost never fall. It also contradicts the image of peace- ful sedentary civilized peoples always threat- ened and occasionally overwhelmed by neighbor- ing barbarians: most of the "overwhelming" has been inflicted by the civilized societies on their peripheral neighbors. When noncivilized peripheral peoples -- usually nomads -- attack and conquer civilized territory, the result has ordinarily been that they settle down, take over, enjoy ruling the civilization, and continue expanding it; on the whole, peripher- al peoples have not developed a sense of peripheral identity and pride sufficient to impel them to destroy the civilizations they have sporadically conquered. Civilizations, on the contrary, strongly tend to destroy their peripheries, through incorporation. Tenure in the semiperiphery is more secure than core tenure (cores decline) or peripheral tenure (peripheries are devoured). But there is some upward mobility. A semiperipheral area remains semiperipheral as long as it is politically annexed to, urbanologically subor- dinate to, militarily dominated by, culturally provincialized by, economically outaccumulated by, technologically outcompeted by, and culti- cally devoted to, the old core. When and where the semiperiphery acquires states as influential, forces as dangerous, cities as populous and wealthy, culture as attractive, technique as progressive, gods as efficacious as those of the core, that part of the semi- periphery becomes core; the core area expands to encompass it. And if the old core should peak and decline, be overtaken and passed in its military and political, demographic and economic, cultural and technical and theologi- cal development by its semiperiphery (or a part of it), so that the old core becomes a historic backwater, becomes marginal to the affairs of the civilization, while the former semiperiphery becomes the new core, we may properly say that the core of the civilization has shifted. And cores do shift: witness Karnak, witness Babylon. The ideas of core-periphery distinctions and inequalities are important to theories of civilizations (especially Carroll Quigley's evolutionary theory, 1961) and of world sys- tems (especially Immanuel Wallerstein's world- systems analysis -- Hopkins, Wallerstein, et al., 1972; Wallerstein, 1974, 1975, 1979, 1982, 1983, 1984). I would like to make a stab at roughly locating cores for the civili- zations/world systems I recognize, discuss the empirics of their gross movement patterns, and juxtapose these "facts" to the theories of Quigley and Wallerstein -- which differ termi- nologically and substantively from each other, and from the exposition just given -- so as to judge which, or what combination, or what alternative theory, seems most helpful in describing, explaining, and projecting core- periphery behavior. Empirics: Cores and Core Shifts in Thirteen Civilizations The most direct approach to sketching the general locations and movements of civiliza- tional cores, as defined above, would be to assume that in a universal empire, the capital city and metropolitan district have politico- military core status by definition, and proba- bly contain the cultic core, extract and consume economic surplus, maintain the cosmop- olis with the largest urban population, sup- port the cultural elite, and contain the loci of invention: hence their location coincides with the core, and shifts of capital/metropole are core shifts. This assumption is a useful ideal-type fiction rather than a universally true empirical generalization; we shall see that exceptions soon emerge. A desirable future project would be to measure rather than assume these consistencies, and observe the order in which preeminences are gained and lost by cores. Correspondingly, in a states system the great powers, the rich states, the religious centers, the megalopoleis, the cultural producers and critics, the great engineers, should be assumed to correspond closely enough that one of these measures will ordinarily suffice to demark a core state, absent contrary data. Where there are contra- dictions, power will take precedence over wealth in our narrative. In the civiliza- tional game, diamonds may be forever; but clubs are always trumps. 1. Egyptian. Egyptian civilization was frequently united under a world state; core shifts are indicated by movements of the capital. After a predynastic period which may have been all-core/no-core (primacy dispersed among nomes), an Upper Egyptian state con- quered the country c. 2850 B.C., but then moved its capital to Lower Egypt (Memphis), where power remained in Dynasties I-IV, to c. 2440 B.C. The kings were war-leaders, and gods, gods'-sons, or high-priests, as well; the pyramids display the compresence of tech- nique (architecture) and wealth (manpower mobilization, funeral offerings) with art and power. The Vth dynasty (2440-2315) sees a small expansion of the core to nearby Heliopolis (Lower Egypt), and power-sharing with the priesthood of the sun-cult of Re. Dynasty VI (c.2315-2175), witnessing the loss of a universal state and the rise of a states system under the local "nomarchs," also seems to reflect the evaporation of the Lower Egyptian core without any clear replacement. This then seems to be an all-core/no-core period. A new core, more dispersed or perhaps faster-shifting, seems to have emerged gradu- ally, with prominent states appearing at Memphis (Dynasty VII) in Lower Egypt, Coptos- Abydos (VIII) in Upper Egypt, Heracleopolis (IX-X) in Middle Egypt, and Thebes (XI) in Upper Egypt. (These dynastic capitals are partly simultaneous, partly sequential.) In due course the emerging core shrank, receding southwards, until it stopped at Thebes (Middle Kingdom, under Mentuhotep II, c. 2050). A Theban dynasty (XII, c. 1991-1786) re- turned the capital northward, to Lisht (Lower Egypt), near Memphis, while maintaining the imperial god Amon at Karnak (Upper Egypt), near Thebes. This is a notable instance of core partition and specialization, an excep- tion to the general practice of concentrated function. Circa 1785-1570 Egyptian civilization was politically fragmented under dynasties XIII- XVII, partly simultaneous regional dynasties: XIII at Thebes, XIV at Xois (Lower Egypt), XV -- Hyksos invaders -- at Avaris (Lower Egypt), XVI Hyksos, XVII Thebes. This may be another all-core period, or one of a rapidly-shifting core. Egypt was reunited under dynasty XVII (Thebes), during whose tenure Egyptian civili- zation couples with Mesopotamian to form Central civilization; until then, the mili- tary, political, religious and economic struc- ture of Egyptian civilization was Theban-core. This capsule history may be read as fol- lows, in core terms. (1) There was usually, but not always (predynastic, dynasty VI, and perhaps XIII-XVII), a semiperiphery in Egyp- tian civilization. (2) Its core shifted frequently, from the time-perspective of the civilization. (3) The duration of core sta- bility, or speed of core shift, fluctuated, with no core enduring more than 4 centuries. (4) Core preeminences -- military, political, economic, religious, technical, cultural -- were usually, but not always (dynasty XII's divided core) collocated in space. (5) Ex- core areas (Memphis in XII, Thebes in XVII) sometimes regained core status; but core shifts more often recruited new areas (Heli- opolis in V, Coptos-Abydos in VIII, Heracleo- polis in IX, Thebes in XI, Xois in XIV, Avaris in XV). The Egyptian core history shows directional movement combined with expansive-contractive pulsation, in the following sequence: all- core/no-core -a Southern core - a Northern core - all-core/no-core - Middle - Southern - Northern - all-core/no-core - Southern. Two different rhythms may underlie this sequence. The core shuttles between south and north, implying the fall of an old core to semi- peripheral status simultaneous with the rise of a semiperipheral area to core status; whatever conditions rendered aged cores inca- pable of continuing seem to have been elimi- nated by a term in the semiperipheral purgato- ry. Behind this shuttle pulses the longer rhythm of states system -- universal empire, in which decentralization and core-enlargement alternate with centralization and core-con- traction, implying an alternation of equaliza- tion processes -- limited semiperipheral rise or limited core decline -- with polarization processes. The core process is clearly relat- ed to, but not reducible to, the states system -- universal empire political process. 2. Mesopotamian. The Uruk-core period of the second half of the 4th millennium B.C. appears to have been succeeded by an all-core period. (Cf. Algaze, 1989.) The Early Dynas- tic 1st dynasty of Uruk may be legendary, but the legend suggests another period in which Sumer, and within it Uruk, had core status. Later core evolutions include: c. 2600-2500 Akkad (Kish) c. 2500-2360 Sumer (Ur, Lagash, Umma) c. 2360-2180 Akkad (Agade) c. 2180-2060 dispersed -- Akkad (Guti of Agade) and Sumer (Uruk, Lagash) -- hence all-core/no-core c. 2060-1950 Sumer (Ur) c. 1950-1700 dispersed -- Ur, Isin, Larsa, Elam, Nippur, Babylon, Mari, Assyria, Qatna, Aleppo, Eshnunna c. 1700-1530 Akkad (Babylon) c. 1530-1500 dispersed -- Hittites, Kassite Babylon, Sea-Land. (Beyond about 1500 BC Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations are, as noted previously, understood as parts a larger, Central civilization, whose core history is capsulized infra.) Most generalizations applied above to Egyptian core history appear largely applica- ble to Mesopotamian as well. There was usual- ly, but not always, a semiperiphery. The core shifted "frequently" -- from the civiliza- tion's duration-perspective! Core preem- inences were usually combined -- but Nippur was a specialized religious center. Cores lasted a century or two. Old cores occasion- ally, exceptionally, resurged. There was a north-south core alternation or "shuttle," and a separate concentration/dispersal rhythm associated with a states system -- universal empire oscillation. Mesopotamia was, however, longer and more frequently in a "dispersed" or "all-core" condition. The latter difference may have been conse- quential. Wesson has argued in general (- 1978:1-18) and specifically with respect to Sumer and Egypt (1978:42-44, 90-91) that "pluralism" of several sorts been causally connected to creativity in civilizations. A similar point is made by Ekholm and Friedman (1982:96). Core dispersion would seem to be yet another sort of "pluralism," likely to be similarly connected. 3. Aegean. An historical "gross anatomy" reveals a Cretan core (c. 2600-1425), with palaces on Crete (Knossos, Mallia, Phaistos, Hagia Triada) and dispersed trade-raid-taxing centers ("Minoa" seaports). This is succeeded by a Greek-mainland core (c. 1425-1100, with centers at Mycenae, Pylos, Tiryns, Athens, Thebes), and a semiperiphery including Milet- us, Melos, Knossos, Troy. This structure is in turn replaced, after an all-core epoch of many poleis, by a rather dispersed largely Anatolian and insular core (c. 750-560) in- cluding Miletus, Phocaea, Chalcis, Eretria, Rhodes, Lesbos, Thera, Corinth, Megara, Ach- aea, as centers of colonialism around much of the Mediterranean; plus non-Greek Phrygia and then Lydia, which eventually provided the link that brought Aegean civilization into Central civilization during this period. The Cretan core fell as the Mainland semiperiphery rose; the Anatolian semiperiphery rose only after much of the Mainland core fell. There was usually, but not always, an Aegean semiperiphery. The Aegean core did shift. The Cretan core was however quite durable, lasting perhaps 800 years; "occasion- al" rather than "frequent" core shifts seem to characterize Aegean civilization (one per millennium, vs. 8 per millennium in Mesopota- mian, and a similar frequency for Egyptian). There was no "shuttle" with a clear renascence of a former core region. 4. Indic. In the Indus valley epoch (c. 2500-1500), a dual core emerged, upstream at Harappa (Punjab), downstream at Mohenjo-Daro (Sind). The Aryan conquest and city-breaking destroyed this core, an all-core/no-core epoch ensuing (inhabited ruined cities), until a new core arose in the Ganges Valley, where Hasti- napur was a major center to the flood in c. 900 BC. Though the sixteen great states of Indic civilization around 600 BC stretched from the Punjab (Gandhara, Kamboja) to the Deccan (Asmaka), most cities (Sravasti, Kapil- avastu, Rummindei, Kusinagara, Sarnath, Varan- asi/Benares, Rajagriha, Bodhgaya/Sambodhi) lay among six states (Kosala, Malla, Vrijji, Kasi, Anga, Magadha) of the middle and lower Gange- tic basin; this represents the emergence, perhaps even the re-emergence, of a Ganges core. The Maurya conquest and empire contracted the core to the metropolitan state, Magadha, and its capital and religious center Patalipu- tra/Patna c. 260 B.C. With the fall of Maurya after c. 230, the core as expanded as semiperipheries rose to core status -- Ionians (Yavanas) in Bactria and the Punjab; Chera, Pandya and Chola in the far south in the 2nd century BC; Saka-Pahlava and Yue-chi Kushana in the 1st century BC and Andhra-Pallava from the 1st century AD. The epoch seems no- core/all-core. A brief Kushana empire was established in the north (upper Ganges and Indus basins) by Kanishka at Peshawar c. A.D. 78-100. inciden- tally re-forming an Indic core. Another dispersal and all-core period followed, with Satavahana/Satakani in the Deccan, Ujjain/Mal- wa, Pallava, Ceylon, all noteworthy centers. The Gupta empire, once more with Magadha as metropole and Patna as capital c. 330-c. 500, restored a Gangetic civilizational core, though not quite qualifying as a universal state. Following the Guptas, there was a dispersal again: Huns (Ephthalites), Malwa, Magadha, Ujjain, Pallava, Chalukya, Chola, Pandya all notable. A Gangetic empire was founded by Harsha at Kanauj 606-647, reconstituting a core. Then once more a dispersal: Kanauj, Gurjara-Prati- hara, Pala, Rashtrakuta, Rajputs, Sind, Chola, Pallava, Chalukya, Vengi, Pandya, Ceylon, Chandella, Paramara, Yaminis of Ghazni. If we consider (as I prefer to) the engulf- ment of Indic by Central civilization to have been accomplished by the Muslim invasions in the 11th century, India next became a semi- periphery of Central civilization, and remains so. If we do not consider Indic civilization to have been integrated into Central civiliza- tion till the 18th century, the period from the 11th to the 18th centuries continued the alternation of north Indian core empires with states-system chaos, hence of semi- peripheralization with core expansion. In either case, after an initial core shift, the pattern of a core empire/semi- periphery alternating with a states sys- tem/expanded core is well established. Howev- er, the dispersed-core or all-core pattern predominates, and contracted cores are short- lived. Cores are preferentially located in the north, with some alternation between Ganges-valley and Indus-valley metropoles, but a stronger inclination to the Ganges. Magadha was twice a metropole. 5. Irish. Turgesius (Turgeis) the Viking, after intensive looting from A.D. 837 on, set up a "longport" or naval camp at Dublin in 842 for greater convenience in plundering Irish states, churches and monasteries. The many Irish kings and occasional hegemonic high kings resisted. The Norse pressed, the Irish pressed back, each nation fought within it- self; Dublin sacked Armagh and was itself sacked. By 842 Irish-Norse alliances are recorded in the Annals of Ulster, by 856 the "Gallogoidel" Norse-Irish mixed bands were a distinct fighting group. No core was evident. Periodically an Irish dynasty or king did achieve hegemonic high-kingship, first the northern Ui Neill of Ulster (from Malachy I, 846-862, to Malachy II, 980-1002 and 1014- 1022), then upstart kings of Munster (Brian Boru, 1002-1014, Turlock O Brien 1064-1086, Muircertach O Brien 1086-1119), of Connacht (Turlock O Connor 1121-1156, Rory O Connor 1166-2286), or of Ulster (Muircertach Mac Lochlainn 1156-1166). Some of the eleventh- and twelfth-century high kings achieved hege- mony over the Norse cities -- raided, took hostages, imposed tribute (Malachy II and Brian Boru and Muircertach Mac Lochlainn on Dublin) or actually reigned from them (Turlock O Brien from Limerick) or named their kings (Turlock and Muircertach O Brien, and Turlock O Connor, for Dublin). One could defend the proposition that there was an Ulster core around 1000, a Munster core around 1100, a fast-moving unstable core in the 12th century (prior to the Norman invasions which attached Irish to Central civilization). However, power seems to have been so dispersed, person- al, resisted, and rapidly displaced that, at time scales comparable to those at which cores persisted in other civilizations, there was no clearly definable core to Irish civilization. All the kingdoms seem to have had rough equal- ity, roughly upheld. 6. Mexican. About 1200-600 B.C. the "- Olmec" area appears to be core, with Gulf coast sites (San Lorenzo, La Venta, Tres Zapotes) and Basin of Mexico sites (Tlatilco). By 600 B.C., the valley of Oaxaca (Zapotec Monte Alban, with the Temple of the Danzantes showing slaughtered "Olmecs," and Mitla) had become the core. Semiperipheries rose: Teoti- huacan in the Basin, Mayan Kaminaljuyu (Guate- mala City) in the Guatemalan Highlands in the Late Preclassic (300 BC-AD 250), perhaps qualifying this as an all-core/no-core period. From about A.D. 200-700 ("Classic" period) the core was the Basin of Mexico, centered on Teotihuacan; semiperipheries seem to have included the Gulf Coast (El Tajin; Teotihuacan pottery), Oaxaca (Monte Alban; pottery; Zapo- tec quarter of Teotihuacan), and the Maya region (probable colonization of Kaminaljuyu as a subimperial center; Teotihuacan figures on Tikal stelae, Teotihuacan-style pottery at Copan and Escuintla). Teotihuacan influence waned and was not replaced among the Maya in the 6th century, and the Late Classic Lowland Maya rose to core status in the 7th and 8th centuries. There was a collapse at Teotihuacan around 700-750, apparently under the impact of north- ern-peripheral "Chichimec" invaders (including Toltecs). After the destruction and abandon- ment of Teotihuacan there seems to have been an all-core/no-core period: Cholula, Tula and Xochicalco in Central Mexico, El Tajin on the Gulf Coast, and Late Classic Maya Lowland Palenque, Piedras Negras, Tikal, Uaxactun, Copan, were all of importance. The rise of Toltec Tula more or less coin- cides with the fall of the Southern Lowlands Classic Maya cities in the "Epiclassic" 9th- 10th centuries (Copan abandoned after 800, Palenque after 810, Tikal abandoned end of 10th century), and of Monte Alban (abandoned c.900) in the 10th, suggesting that the Basin of Mexico was once again moving to core sta- tus. During this Basin-core epoch (11th-12th centuries), West and Northwest Mexico rose to be an important semiperiphery, and the Maya lands declined to semiperipheral status: Chichen Itza was occupied by Toltecs c. 1000- 1180 and dominated the Northern Maya Lowlands; the Southern Lowlands remained depopulated; the Highlands showed Toltec influence. Tula and the Toltec empire collapsed in the 13th century, perhaps again under the impact of northern-peripheral "Chichimec" invaders. The 14th century was again all-core/no-core: the Tarascans at Tzintuntzan in West Mexico, the Mixtec in Oaxaca (Monte Alban and Mitla), the Totonac at Cempoala on the Gulf Coast, Quiche in the Guatemalan Highlands, Mayapan dominating the Northern Yucatan Lowlands, the Tepanecs at Azcapotzalco in the Basin, mercan- tile Putun sea-traders at Cozumel and along the Gulf coast. The 15th century saw the rise of the Aztecs of Tenochtitlan, hence the return of a Mexico- Basin core. In shorter compass: a Gulf-and-Basin dual core; a shift of the core to Oaxaca; an all- core/no-core epoch; a Basin core; an all- core/no-core epoch; a Basin core; an all- core/no-core epoch; a Basin core. There was a semiperiphery about as often as not. Core lifetimes ranged from two to six centuries. The Basin of Mexico was usually, but not always, the core; no "shuttle" appears, but the equalization/polarization rhythm is dis- tinct, though a universal empire emerged only from the final polarization. 7. Peruvian. Six phases seem distinguish- able: (1) Initial Ceramic, 1900-1200 B.C.: in monumental communally constructed ceremonial complexes -- highland Kotosh before 1800, coastal El Paraiso and central-coast Cerro Sechin (c. 1200). Probably all-core/no-core. (2) Early Horizon, 1200-300. Widespread cultural unity in Chavin style, after N. Highland Chavin de Huantar, perhaps a Kotosh offshoot, spread through most of Peru, with a north coast manifestation (Cupisnique) and a south coast region (Paracas). Chavin seems to be the civilizational core on grounds of cultural domination; no universal state or core empire is apparent. (3) Early Intermediate, 300 B.C.-A.D. 700: Cultural diversity, nationalism, interregional warfare. Coastal sites: Vicus, Moche (milita- ristic-expansionist), Lima (Maranga, Pachacam- ac, Cerro de Trinidad sites), Nazca (Cahuachi, Tambo Viejo), Atacameno. Highland sites: Cajamarca, Recuay, Huarpa (Huari; expansion- ist), Waru, Tiahuanaco (expansionist). Re- gional cultural variety and political polycen- tricity suggest this was an all-core/no-core period. (4) Middle Horizon, A.D. 700-1100. Cultur- al unity under Tiahuanaco (southern) and Huari (northern) cultures and empires, with the Huari style derivative and the Huari center and empire shorter-lived (though greater in extent, with sites at Cajamarca, Cajamar- quilla, Pachacamac, Chakipampa, Pacheco, Piquillacta). Probably best classified there- fore as a twin-core period but (as with Har- appa/Mohenjo Daro), arguably either Huari-core or Tiahuanaco-core. (5) Late Intermediate 1100-1438/78. Cul- tural diversity. Peruvian coastal cultures, states and styles: Chimu (Chanchan), Chancay, Pachacamac, Chincha (La Centinela), Ica. Highlands: Cajamarca, Chanca, Killke (Cuzco), Lucre, Colla, Lupaca. Constant fighting, several empires: all core/no-core. (6) Late Horizon 1438-1532. Cultural unity or unification imposed via Inca expansion from Cuzco, with notable sites at Machu Picchu, Cajamarca, Huanuco Viejo, Cushichaca, Tambo Colorado, Ollantaytambo. The sequence seems then to be: all core/no- core; Chavin core; all-core/no-core; Huari- Tiahuanaco core; all-core/no-core; Cuzco core. The move from Chavin to Huari-Tiahuanaco was southward, that to Cuzco northward again. Core and all-core periods were very long, especially earlier, e.g., the 9-century Chavin core and 1000-year all-core Early Intermediate period. All-core seems the norm. Core epochs were too few to display a shuttle. Old cores did not resurge. 8. Chibchan. At the Spanish conquest, Chibchan civilization was politically bipolar, with some indication that the more sparsely populated, economically advanced, militarily aggressive state of the Zipa in Cundirramarca (Cundinamarca) was a semiperipheral upstart attacking the smaller, denser, more tradition- al, older religious-center core states allied with the Zaque in Boyaca, and that the Spanish conquest anticipated a core shift (and imple- mented it when the Zipa's capital of Bacata became the Spanish administrative center Santa Fe de Bogota). But there is not a long enough archaeological record for the Chibchan case to contribute much to our inquiry into core- periphery kinematics. 9. Indonesian. The locations of the key states are not all certain. A tentative sequence would be: Sumatran core (Ko-ying) 2nd century A.D.; all core/no-core 3rd-4th centu- ries; Javan core (Ho-lo-tan) 5th century; Sumatran core (Kan-to-li) 6th century; all- core/no-core 7th century; Sumatran core (Sriv- ijaya) 8th-12th centuries; all-core/no-core 13th century (rise of Singosari in Java and Ligor in Malaya); Javan core 14th century (Madjapahit); Malayan core 15th century (Mal- acca); engulfed by Central civilization in 16th century, perhaps with the capture of Malacca. This sequence shows an oscillation between core and no-core/all-core phases (4 core, 3 all-core periods) and a core shuttle among Sumatra (3 times), Java (twice) and Malaya (once). The all-core phase prevails earlier, the core phase later. When the core shifted, it returned to a former core area somewhat more often than it moved to a never-core location. 10. West African. A case could be made that the core of West African civilization was, and remained throughout its autonomous history, the general area of the great bend of the Niger river. However, given that the shift of power over the centuries was from Ghana's universal empire (Kumbi Saleh), to the Soso hegemony, to Malian empire (Timbuktu), to Songhai empire (Gao, Timbuktu), to the Hausa confederation (Zaria, Kano, Katsina), and that this sequence shows a general tendency (the Soso ascendancy and Songhai return to Timbuktu excepted) eastward and downriver, it makes somewhat more sense to speak of a slow and fairly steady eastward drift, with Kumbi out of the core in the 13th century after its sack by Sumanguru of Soso (1203) and its destruc- tion by Sun Diata of Mali (1240). The overall drift is rather more like the Aegean than the Egyptian pattern. 11. Mississippian. The Adena core is in the Ohio Valley; Hopewell has an Ohio and an Illinois twin-core; the Temple Mound core seems to lie in Illinois, around Cahokia. This may be treated as a single very slow shift, or an expansion to and contraction around a new, formerly semiperipheral site. It is not clear whether all-core epochs were interpolated. 12. Far Eastern. Macroscopically, northern China was the core area of Far Eastern civili- zation from Shang times (late 2nd millennium B.C.) through the Later Han (3rd century A.D.). When one looks more closely the pic- ture becomes at once more blurred, more shift- ing, and more complex: there are cores within the core. While the economic-demographic- cultural core seems to remain in the Yellow River plain, political-military power (imperi- al capitals; great powers) oscillates. Shang capitals (e.g., the last, An-yang/Yin) seem to lie within the economic core. The Chou, formerly a semiperipheral client people, first establish a metropole on their home territory in the Wei Valley (capital Sian), then move east (to Lo-yang), nearer the economic-demo- graphic core. With the breakup of the Eastern Chou core empire, the civilizational core remains in North China, but again partitions: small populous rich central states, politically and militarily weak but culturally progressive, are surrounded by large young states which become politico-militarily dominant. This period is therefore a split-core taxonomic puzzle. The Ch'in and Former Han universal empires continue the core split: the political and communications center is again in the Wei valley (Ch'ang-an), the economic-demographic center downriver in the Yellow River plain. The Later Han ends the division by again moving the capital eastward, to the westerly fringe of the demographic core (Lo-yang). The Three Kingdoms symbolize the expansion of the core area from North China to Szechwan and the Yangtze basins, and seem to reflect an all-core epoch. This continues during the Southern and Northern Dynasties, accompanied by a shift of population from the Yellow River to the Yangtze basin due to steppe-nomad invasions, destruction and depopulation, which push the core southward. A new politico-military power emerges in the northwest under Sino-nomad elites and states, and under the Sui and T'ang states creates first a core empire and then a univer- sal state encompassing the bulk of the semi- periphery as well as the core. From late T'ang onward, the expansion of the civilized area without full acculturation of Koreans, Khitans, Uighurs, Tibertans, Tai, Annamese, Tanguts, etc. makes it appropriate to refer to "China" as such as the core area of the Far Eastern civilization -- meaning by "China" approximately the territories united by the Northern Sung, i.e. excluding 20th- century Korea, Manchuria, Mongolia, Sinkiang, Tibet, Yunnan, Vietnam. The enlarged core was divided by Chin and Southern Sung, reunited by the Mongols, and may be considered to have remained the Far Eastern core under Ming and Manchus, down to the absorption of Far Eastern by Central civilization in the 19th-20th centuries. Far Eastern civilization has normally had a core. Core preeminences have however often been partitioned in space: politico-military and demographic-economic-cultural cores split apart, then drift together. The Far Eastern core has tended to expand more than to shift, even more markedly than will be seen in the core history of Central civilization. The Far Eastern core has been very durable indeed. On the other hand, the cultural hegemony of the core states (ability to Sinicize peripheral peoples as or after they are semi- peripheralized) diminished noticeably in the Later Han, and again diminished with the later T'ang. 13. Japanese. The Nara period (710-784) sees what is probably the first core along with the first fixed capital. The move to nearby Heian (Kyoto), in 794, leaving the Nara monasteries behind, is a local shift of this rather tiny core. The division of function between administrative-religious Kyoto and politico-military Kamakura (1185-1333) expands the core, with both capitals serving as cul- tural-artistic centers. Decentralization in the Ashikaga period (1336-1568) sees the growth of economic cen- ters -- Sakai (Osaka), Hyogo (Kobe), Hakata (Fukuoka) -- while the politico-cultural capital returns to Kyoto after the divided dynasties of the Yoshino period (1336-1391); this seems an all-core/no-core period. Further commercial decentralization (Naga- saki 1570-1638, Hirada 1609-1641) is reversed by the Azuchi-Momoyama national unification period (1568-1600), during which the function- ing core contracts, perhaps as narrowly as to the Oda castle at Azuchi (1578-1582), the Hideyoshi castle at Osaka (1538-1598) and finally in the Tokugawa period (1600-1868) to the Tokugawa military base of Edo-Tokyo, which becomes the political-economic and cultural center. Kyoto remains the formal capital and enjoys a brief renaissance in the last decades of the Tokugawa period, which marks the begin- ning of the 19th-20th century incorporation of Japanese into Central civilization. The reckoning would seem to be: an all- core/no-core period; core at Nara; core shift to Heian; core expansion Kyoto-Kamakura, and later Kyoto-Yoshino; an all-core period; core at Edo-Tokyo. The core epochs seem the norm, lasting longer than the all-core periods. A functionally split core prevails. Empirics: Expansion and Core History of Cen- tral Civilization Writing an approximate history of core areas and core shifts in Central civilization will be a considerably more complex undertaking than doing the same for even Indic and Far Eastern civilizations, the next most taxing candidates. The task is complicated by Cen- tral civilization's 3 1/2-millennium expan- sion, which has converted periphery into semiperiphery and allowed semiperipheral areas to enter an expanding core. Before locating the motion and change of the Central core over time and space, we need to estimate the expan- sion of Central civilization as a whole. That expansion can be usefully examined, and the issues that must arise in its study exposed, by searching for the frontiers of Central civilization over time. It is convenient to use eight compass directions in this examination. Central civilization, starting from a core in the Nile Valley + the Fertile Crescent, has expanded southeastward into Arabia; eastward into Iran, India, Southeast and East Asia; northeastward into Central Asia and Siberia; northward into the Caucasus, the Ukraine, Russia; northwest- ward into Anatolia, the Balkans, northwest Europe; westward through the Mediterranean basin, then to the New World; southwestward into West Africa; and southward into the Sudan, the Horn, East, Central and Southern Africa. What follows is a sketch, again hypothetical and preliminary, of what should became a fertile field of civilization re- search: suggested answers (or subquestions) to the question, When did Central civilization arrive where, how, and what did it encounter there? The "arrival" of an extant civilization in a new territory is represented by its estab- lishment of strong and durable political links, conflictual or cooperative -- conquest, imperial integration, recurrent war, alliance, etc. Its imputed pace of expansion will depend upon the intensity and duration of the political connections established by threat, attack, invasion, conquest, occupation etc. Brief or weak linkings will pose problems: an urban area that perceives a continuing threat from another is linked to it in a single political system precisely by the threat; yet an intercivilizational interaction, much stronger than a mere threat -- invasion and conquest -- may, if the invaders go home and never return, or the conquerors lose all political linkage with their home civiliza- tion, produce no lasting or significant trans- actional linkage at all between the "source" and "target" civilizations. When some picture of the local "arrivals" of Central civilization is developed, the question of when (if at all) the Central core arrived in the same territories can then be addressed. Core status has surely arrived when and where, in a states system, one of the independent semiperipheral states (e.g., the United States) becomes a Great Power; or, in a universal state, when a new capital city is built in a semiperipheral area (e.g., Constan- tinople). A semiperipheral state, or a non- metropolitan province of a world state, may or may not have attained core status -- the circumstances of each particular case would have to be examined -- if, in a peaceful epoch of its world system, it happened to become the system's center of wealth, culture, invention, or piety. Central civilization, and its core, have on occasion contracted or shifted. We must be able to say when a territory is lost to a civilization, or to its core, in general. A territory is lost to a civilization when it is de-urbanized, or when its cities' ongo- ing politico-military connection thereto is cut, by voluntary mutual isolation or by the de-urbanization or depopulation of an inter- vening and connecting area. A territory is thrust out of the core when conquered and occupied. It slips out of the core peacefully when, declining in power, wealth and prestige, its provinces/states and peoples come to be patronized, taken for granted, treated as backward, uplifted, advised, educated, helped, used, abused, proselytized, enlightened, snubbed, etc., when previously they had been accustomed to patronize, help, enlighten and abuse. Measurement of peaceful loss of core status is more difficult, or requires inspec- tion of longer historical durations, than measurement of loss through conquest. The southeastward expansion of Central civilization. I would provisionally treat the trade settlements in Bahrein (Dilmun) and Qatar from the late 2nd millennium B.C., and the Yemenite kingdoms of Minya, Sheba, Qataban and Hadramaut from the early to middle first millennium B.C., as southeastward extensions of the Central semiperiphery to incorporate coastal Arabia. The dating for the incorporation of the Persian Gulf coast will remain provisional until political-archeological data are recov- ered. The Red Sea coast dating involves a centralist/pluralist controversy. It could be argued, though I would not do so, that an autonomous Yemenite civilization existed from at least c. 750 B.C. ("Saba" known to the Assyrians) to some later date when it was incorporated into Central civilization: c. 500 B.C. (consolidation of Sheba in response to Persian conquests in N. Arabia); or the 1st Century B.C. (Roman invasion of Yemen); or the 1st Century A.D. (formation of Axum as a "bridge" state between Central and "Yemenite" civilizations?); or the 4th Century A.D. (first Axumite conquest of Yemen); or the 6th century A.D. (second Axumite conquest of Yemen; Persian conquest of Yemen); or even the 7th century (Muslim conquest of Yemen and Syria). But I prefer the interpretation that the Persian Gulf and Red Sea settlements represent southeastward extensions of the Central semiperiphery, rather than autonomous civilizations, in which case they have re- mained outside the Central core until today. The eastward expansion of Central civiliza- tion. Elamite Susa seems to represent the initial eastward outpost of Central civili- zation's core, Susa's hinterland the initial semiperipheral Ostmark. The Medean-Persian- Macedonian eastmarch is the Indus, while Persepolis/Istakhr, Ecbatana/Hamadan, and Rayy join Susa as the easterly core cities in that age. Central civilization's frontier retreats westward with the Seleucid evacuation before the Mauryas. Menander's kingdom advances it eastward again, to the upper Indus. The Roman universal state drives Mesopotamia out of the core into semiperipheral status; it returns to the core with the Sassanids and Abbasids. The Surens and Sakas probably succeed the Greek principalities as easterly marchers. The Kushans, White Huns and Turks probably jitter between peripheral and semiperipheral status, and the eastern frontier jitters with them. The eastern frontier of Central civiliza- tion is pushed into the Punjab again by Mahmud of Ghazni's raids around 1000 A.D. and deeper into India by the Delhi dynasties. The Mongol invasion destroys some of the eastern urban extensions of Central civilization, especially in Afghanistan. Timur's invasions of India re-establish the (hostile) connections, and the Mughals complete the linkage of the Indic to the Central civilizational network, thereby pushing the eastern frontier of Central civi- lization to the delta of the Ganges. As regards the easterly progress of the Central core: Semiperipheral Anatolia begins a long tenure as core territory with Constan- tine, and returns to the semiperiphery with the 19th-century Ottoman decline. Mesopotamia enjoys core status until Timur's wars drive it down and out of the core of Central Civiliza- tion. While the Nile Valley jitters between core and semiperiphery during the Turco-Islam- ic dynasties, India, semiperipheralized by the Muslim conquest, makes a bid for core status under the Mughals; both Egypt and India re- enter the semiperiphery during the Western empires, and remain there today after the Western retrenchment -- as do Mesopotamia and Anatolia. To return to the eastward march of Central civilization: European military-economic- political penetration and rivalries bring southeast Asia (both the continental portion, which is prised from Far Eastern civilization, and the autonomous Indonesian civilization) into the Central semiperiphery in the 16th- 18th centuries; there it still remains. The Manchu empire, Japan and Korea -- the rest of Far Eastern, and all of Japanese, civilizations -- enter Central civilization's semiperiphery in the 19th and/or 20th centuries, somewhere between the Opium Wars and World War I, and immediately begin to struggle for core status. Japan attains core status in a military sense 1905- 1918, loses it in 1945, regains it economical- ly from the 1970's, militarily sometime in the 1980's. China probably achieved core status in the 1970's, and has probably not yet lost it. (In the last map, I have however excluded the non-Han, poor and near-empty west of "China" from core status on the ground that contemporary "China" is a multinational em- pire.) The northeastward expansion of Central civilization. The expansion of Central civi- lization along a "northeastward" axis begins from Ecbatana/Hamadan and Rayy. Next come Hecatompylus/Damghan, Merv and Bactra/Balkh; Bactria (the state) may even have been a core state, but the Yue-Chi, Kushans, White Huns and Turks in Bactria (the territory) were certainly at best semiperipheral. A debate exists over whether Central Asia ever had civilizational autonomy; I incline to see it as always an extension of Central civilization, but one whose records of linkage have been peculiarly obscured by peripheral counterinvasion and destruction. Certainly no later than the Ummayads, the Central frontier advances to the Jaxartes; the Tahirids and Samanids may well have put Transoxania into the Central core, after which it jitters between core, semiperiphery and periphery, tending toward long-term decline, under Karak- hanids, Seljuks, Ghuzz, Karakhitai, Khwariz- mians, Mongol Khanates, Timurid Emirates and Uzbeks. The eastward extension of the Musco- vite/Russian frontier through Siberia, to the Manchu frontier, enveloping Kazakhs and Uzbeks in Central Asia, becomes the main expansive force of Central civilization in this "north- easterly" direction after the Uzbek conquest of Transoxania. Under Muscovite, Russian and Soviet empires, Central and North Asia become stably semiperipheral, and mostly so remains today, though the Trans-Siberian corridor seems more genuinely "Russian," and so more properly "core" than most of the Asian USSR or RSFSR; again I have so indicated on the final map in the set. The northward expansion of Central civili- zation. In the 2nd millennium B.C. the Mit- anni and Assyria are Central civilization's marchers; Van and the Medes push the Central frontier northward into the Caucasus. Arme- nia, the Bosporan kingdom, Colchis, Lazica, Iberia, the Albani, the Abasgians are key players on the frontier, moving it northward only slightly over a long period. The Khazars move it faster; Kievan Russia and its succes- sors complete the northward movement. The northward movement of Central civiliza- tion is notable for its slow pace, and for the degree to which it is embodied less in imperi- alist conquests of peripheral territory by core states than in the formation of "reaction states" -- states formed by peripheral peoples under pressure from/in admiration of/to defend against/to imitate/to excel their civiliz- ational neighbors. The entry of the northward semiperiphery into the core of Central civili- zation comes late, with Russian participation in the great wars of the 18th century, but Russia remains in the core, except, perhaps, between the two World Wars of the 20th centu- ry. The northwestward expansion of Central civilization. The Hittites are 2nd millennium members, first of the Mesopotamian civiliz- ation's semiperiphery, then of the Central civilization's core. Peripheral Phrygians and Luvians first force the civilization's fron- tier backward by invasion and conquest, then form reaction states and become members of the Central semiperiphery. Cimmerians push the civilizational frontier back. Lydians advance it again, definitively recruiting (or re- recruiting) the peoples of Aegean civilization to Central, first as semiperipherals. Persians push the Central semiperiphery into Thrace. Epirus and Macedon remain march- ers for a long time. Anabasis and Alexander reflect unsuccessful and successful bids for core status by the Greco-Macedonian semi- peripheral peoples on the Central northwest. Rome drives these peoples back to semi- peripheral status by the 2nd century BC; some return to the core in the 4th century AD, but lose that status again over the long period of Islamic (Arab/Turk) expansion to local hegemo- ny. The Roman imperial frontiers from Britain to Thrace would then embody the next substan- tial forward movement of Central civili- zation's northwest frontier, after the Balkan entry in the 5th-4th centuries BC. The Frankish -- Ostrogothic -- Byzantine frontier represents the next main hesitation and jitter in the continual but discontinuous Central expansion northwestward. The missionary advance of Roman and Eastern Christianity after Charlemagne and Cyril, because it repre- sents enduring political linkage and not simply a change of worldviews, thereafter roughly marks the assimilation of eastern, northern and northwestern Europe into Central civilization. States from this frontier (Frankish, Holy Roman, France, England, Aus- tria, Prussia/Germany, to a lesser degree Holland, Denmark, Sweden) enter the Central core, and by the 17th century largely consti- tute that core, though always sharing that status with some others, increasingly so in the late 20th century, when core wars perhaps temporarily semiperipheralized Northwest Europe. The westward expansion of Central civiliza- tion. Phrygia and Lydia become the instru- ments by which Central civilization engulfs Aegean Civilization (by then Greek-dominated). Phoenicians/Carthaginians and westward-moving Greeks bring in the eastern, then the western Mediterranean (and the Atlantic at Cadiz) via colonialism. Etruscans, then Latins/Romans, become reaction-state marchmen, as do Numid- ians and Mauretanians. Rome brings in the rest of Iberia by straightforward imperialism. The westward expansion then stops at the Atlantic for a millennium and a half. Rome enters the Central core in the 3rd-2nd centuries BC, leaving it in the 4th-5th centu- ries AD. Iberia enters the core in the late 15th century, leaves it in the 17th. Italy returns to core status during the Renaissance, and again via nationalistic and imperialist wars in the late 19th and early 20th century. Today the states of this western frontier seek core status, and Italy has perhaps regained it once more, via European integration. Meanwhile Iberians, and then northwest Europeans, restarting the westward expansion, extend Central civilization to the New World from the late 15th century A.D., in the pro- cess reducing Mexican, Peruvian and Chibchan civilizations to semiperipheries of Central civilization. European colonists carry the Central frontier with them beyond the civil- izational boundaries of the engulfed New World civilizations: the American frontier is closed in the late 19th century, the Canadian (and Alaskan) in the mid or late 20th. The Amazo- nian frontier has probably closed by 1990, with the recruitment of the remaining periph- eral tribes to semiperipheral subordination and/or resistance. America enters the Central civilizational core by World War I, Canada after World War II; the remainder of the far western (New World) frontier of Central civi- lization is still semiperipheral today. The southwestward expansion of Central civilization. The southwestern frontier of Central civilization remains not far from the Nile Valley, blocked by the Sahara, from the mid-2nd millennium B.C. to the mid-2nd millen- nium A.D. It is then extended by a politico- economic-military envelopment maneuver, the seafaring ventures along the West African coast by Portuguese, Dutch, French and British members of Central civilization, and by trans- Saharan military ventures by Moroccans, which incorporate the West African interior (includ- ing the West African civilization) into Cen- tral civilization. This encirclement means that the final "southwestward" penetration of Africa is carried out by forces moving east- ward, and by local opponents forming reaction states in response to pressure from their west. The southwestward expansion of Central civilization was completed not later than the 19th century; thus far no areas so penetrated have entered the Central core. The southward expansion of Central civili- zation. Nubia is brought into Central civili- zation by Egyptians in the late 2nd millennium B.C., and is succeeded in the next millennium by Meroe as the south-march (or simply moves its capital upstream from Napata to Meroe?). Axum/Abyssinia takes that marcher role in the first half of the first millennium A.D., carrying Central civilization's frontier to Eritrea and then to Ethiopian plateau. Of these territories, only Napata ever enters the Central core, briefly, under Pi'ankhi (late 8th century BC), before the XXV Dynasty ("Eth- iopian") moves its capital to Thebes. Beyond Axum, the southward expansion of Central civilization quinquefurcates, with different stories for each of the following areas: Ethiopia, Nubia, Sudan, East Africa, Central Africa. Southward expansion: Ethiopia. The Arab conquest in the 7th century broke Axum's land and sea connections to the Byzantine empire. The Ethiopian link to Central civilization was however maintained -- oppositionally, via Muslim states. The Arab conquests were fol- lowed by a continued semiperipherality of the conquered regions, some of which may have become peripheral. Ethiopia was kept connect- ed to Central civilization (1) through Muslim attacks in the 13th-16th centuries, (2) through Portuguese and Spanish connections in the 16th-17th centuries, and (3) through British and Italian connections in the 19th and 20th centuries, and remains today in the Central semiperiphery. Southward expansion: Nubia. The outermost Nubian area may have been lost to Central civilization (through deurbanization) when Meroe was destroyed by Ethiopians in the 4th century, and its people moved westward; but a post-Meroitic Nubian civilized area continued downriver near Dongola, linked to Ethiopia and therefore a part of Central civilization. Islamized Egypt maintained this Nubia's Cen- tral connection through repeated invasions after the 7th century, infiltration and con- version in the 13th-15th century, Funj rule in the 16th-18th centuries, and Egyptian and British conquests in the 19th century. Con- temporary struggles in the state of Sudan represent the pressure of the Arabized north- ern semiperipheral peoples upon the once peripheral tribal peoples of the south, who are thereby recruited into the Central semi- periphery. Southward expansion: Sudan. Sudanic states -- from Funj through Kordofan, Darfur, Wadai, Bagirmi, Kanem, Bornu, to the westerly marches of the Hausa states -- arose as a result of westward penetration from Nubia by Arab trad- ers and Islam, and in chain reaction, as an extension (from Nubia) of Central civiliza- tion. The 19th century European conquests simply enlarged and redirected the connections of the Sudanic area with Central civilization. Southward expansion: East Africa. Arab- Islamic penetration established city-states, outposts of the states system of Central civilization, at Mogadisho (contemporary Somalia, c. 900), Malindi (Kenya, 10th centu- ry), Mombasa (Kenya, 8th century -- ivory, slaves), Pate (Kenya), Kilwa Kisiwani (Tanza- nia, by 1200 -- gold, ivory, skins), Sofala (Mozambique after 1000 -- gold, ivory), Cuama (Mozambique, after 1000), Inhambane (Mozam- bique, after 1000 -- slaves, ivory). Inland, over against the coastal colonies, reaction states formed, e.g., Monomatapa/Mwanamutapa vis-a-vis Sofala c. 1420, and before it, from the 11th century, Great Zimbabwe. Thus civi- lization in East Africa constituted a semi- periphery of Central civilization well before the 16th century imperialist expansions of the Central states Portugal and Oman rendered East African territories provinces of Central civilization's semiperipheral states. Southward expansion: Central Africa. State formation was brought to Central Africa by the Cwezi states (in current Uganda) not later than the 14th century, and continued by their Bito successors (Buganda-Bunyoro-Ankole) from around 1500, the Kongo state (in current Angola) in the 14th century, Tutsi states (Rwanda and Burundi) in the 15th, Ndongo (Angola) by the 16th, Luba and Lunda States (Zaire) in the 16th, the Kuba kingdom of the Shongo (Zaire) from the early 17th century. The two extremes (Uganda and Angola) began independently of each other; they were linked up slowly over the next three centuries into a Central African constellation whose states were independent until provincialized through Portuguese (15th century onward), then Zanzi- bari, British and Belgian (19th century) penetration. When and where urbanization, therefore civilization, occurred among the Central African states, it occurred as a reaction, not only to their penetration by Central-civilization traders, but to the colonial plantation of trading posts, mission stations and city-states on the west and east coasts -- and then to one another's citifica- tion. The urbanization of Central Africa accordingly constituted a long and tenuous extension of Central civilization's semiper- iphery, and the territories thus recruited to the semiperiphery have remained there, as states, then as imperial colonies or provinc- es, now once again as states. The "career" of Central civilization's core. As Central civilization expanded, in all directions, at varying paces, the newly recruited areas generally entered its semiper- iphery, where most have remained. Still, the core of Central civilization has certainly both expanded and shifted over time. In the Near Eastern phase the core was at first the line of cities along the Fertile Crescent and the Nile Valley; over time, the core expanded, mostly westward into the Mediterranean litto- ral, to Asia Minor and to Greece. During the Greco-Roman phase the core area expanded to include Italy, and shifted westward from Mesopotamia. During the Medieval phase the core area once again included Mesopotamia; the core shifted eastward again toward Thrace, Anatolia, Egypt, Syria, Iraq. Italy went out with the decline of Rome and returned to the core with the rise of Venice and other cities of Northern Italy. During the Western phase the whole core of Central civilization shifted north and west to France, Spain, the Low Countries, Germany, Britain. In the global phase the core seems to have expanded greatly, to include America and Russia, and probably Japan. Plausible current candidates for future core status include India and China; Russia (as USSR) shows distinct signs of strain and potential breakup and dropout, but still remains a core state. Many short-term fluctuations and local attainments, disasters and controversies are necessarily passed over in these abbreviated descriptions, which however give the general picture of core enlargement/contraction and shift in language comparable to that employed for the other thirteen civilizations already described. There is plenty of work to be done debating the dimensions of civilizational movement and mapping core shifts; but it seems beyond much dispute that Central civilization has expanded in space; its core area has expanded in space; its semiperiphery has also expanded in space; its core has shifted over space, with old core areas declining into the semiperiphery and new core areas rising out of same. These propositions are illustrated in Figures 3 through 11: Central civilization in 825 BC, 375 BC, 145 BC, AD 737, 1028, 1212, 1478, 1600, and to- day. Core Theoretics The political form of a civilizational core. A civilization's core may have any of several political forms. It may be a single state, as in: Mesopotamian civilization, perhaps, during the (perhaps legendary) 1st Uruk dynasty, c. 2850-2600?; Aegean, perhaps, during the main- land period (Mycenae); Indic during the Maurya rise and fall and the Kushana, Gupta and Kanauj empires; Mexican, perhaps during Oaxa- can, Tiahuanaco and Toltec hegemonies and the rise of the Aztecs; Peruvian, perhaps during Chavin, surely during the rise of the Incas; Indonesian, perhaps in the 2nd (Ko-ying), surely in the 15th century (Malacca) and during the rise and fall of Srivijaya and Madjapahit; Far Eastern in late T'ang and northern Sung, and during the rise of Ch'in, the fall of Han, the rise of Sui and of the Mongols; Japanese during Azuchi-Momoyama; Central during the rise and fall of Assyria, the rise of Media and Persia and Rome, and the era of Justinian. The core may contain several several states, successively hegemonic: in Mesopota- mian civilization, the Sumerian core c. 2500- 2360 (Ur, Lagash, Umma). It may constitute several states simultaneously balanced, as in: Egyptian during the Intermediate periods; Mesopotamian during the Gutian and Isin-Larsa eras; Aegean during the Anatolian period; Indic between the major empires; Irish throug- hout -- or at least between hegemonic high kings; "Olmec" Mexican; Huari-Tiahuanaco Peruvian; Chibchan; Indonesian in the 3rd-4th, 7th and 13th century intervals between ascend- ancies; West African between universal states; Far Eastern in the chaotic Eastern Chou, the Han-Sui interval, and the Ch'in-Southern Sung period; Japanese during the late Ashikaga chaos; Central between universal empires, and for most of the time since the Roman empire's fracturing. The core may be the metropolitan region of a universal state: Egyptian during the king- doms; Mesopotamian during the empires of Agade, 3rd dynasty Ur, and Babylon; perhaps Aegean, during the Cretan period; Indic during the Maurya empire: Indonesian during the Srivijaya and Madjapahit peaks; West African during the Ghana, Mali and Songhai peaks; Far Eastern during the Western Chou, Later Han, Sui-early T'ang, and Mongol-Ming-Manchu peri- ods; Japanese in the Nara, Heian and Tokugawa periods; Central during the Assyrian, Persian- Macedonian and Roman empires. Or the civili- zational core may be a functionally divided set of areas in a universal state, as in Far Eastern civilization in the Ch'in-Former Han and Japanese civilization during the Kamakura period. The most frequent core forms are: the single dominant or hegemonic state; several competing states; and the universal-empire metropole. Pulsation of cores. Core areas enlarge and contract. The Egyptian core included part of the Nile valley, then the whole (Dynasties VI- VIII), then part, then all (Dynasties XIII- XVII), then part. The Indic core contracted under the Mauryas, Kushanas, Guptas and Hars- ha, and reexpanded after the fall of each. The Mexican core expanded between, but con- tracted during the Teotihuacan, Toltec and Aztec eras; the Peruvian behaved similarly between and during Chavin, Tiahuanaco-Huari, and Inca horizons, the Indonesian between and during Ko-ying, Ho-lo-tan, Kan-to-li, Srivija- ya, and Madjapahit-Malacca eras. The Missis- sippian core expanded from Adena to Hopewell, contracted from Hopewell to Temple Mound. The Far Eastern core expanded in the Three King- doms period. The Japanese core expanded in Kamakura and Ashikaga periods, contracted during Azuchi-Momoyama and Tokugawa. Central civilization's core shifts -- westward in the Greco-Roman phase, eastward in the Medieval phase, westward again in the Western phase -- involved expansion at one edge synchronic with contraction at the other; the global phase saw core expansion east and west. Contractions are naturally enough associated with hegemonic struggles and universal-state periods, expan- sions with all-core epochs; but not perfectly. Are semiperipheries necessary? Apparently not, since civilizations are often all- core/no-core, i.e. lack a semiperiphery. Egyptian civilization had a semiperiphery during the Kingdoms, did not during the Inter- mediate periods; Indic did during the empires, not between. Mesopotamian civilization seems always to have had a semiperiphery, Aegean likewise; Irish never did. Mexican civiliza- tion had no discernible semiperiphery in the intervals between the Teotihuacan, Toltec and Aztec ascendancies, nor did Peruvian in its Intermediate periods between Horizons. Chib- chan may have developed a semiperiphery in Cundirramarca. Indonesian civilization proba- bly had none between the Sumatran, Javan and Malaysian ascendancies, and probably did during those ascendancies. West African civilization probably always had a semi- periphery; Mississippian did at least during Hopewell and Temple Mound. Far Eastern civi- lization almost always had one, with Eastern Chou and the Han-Sui interregnum notable exceptions. Japanese civilization usually had a semiperiphery, with the Ashikaga period likely the exception. Central civilization has always had a significant semiperipheral area. Semiperipheries exist more often than not, particularly in universal-empire periods when the metropole is especially favored, but they do not seem necessary features of a civiliza- tion: power, wealth, creativity can all be rather widely dispersed, though dispersal usually alternates with concentration. Directionality of core shift. Cores may move in a single general direction, or oscil- late. The Egyptian core shuttled between north and south, the Mesopotamian between Sumer and Akkad. The Aegean core moved north, then east; the Indic core shuttled between west and east, though with an eastward incli- nation. The Mexican core moved south, then partway north again; so did the Peruvian. The Indonesian core oscillated between Sumatra and Java and then to Malaya. The West African core drifted eastward with a few half-moves back, the Mississippian core drifted westward, the Japanese eastward. The Central core half- moved west, then east, then drifted west and north. No significant patterns are evident. Reversibility of core decline. Does past experience as a core preclude or assure return to core status? Apparently neither. Let us first take note of, and then set aside all the apparent civilizational-startup first-time cores: the Egyptian south in first unifica- tion; Mesopotamian Sumer in the 4th millennium BC; Aegean Crete; Indus basin at the beginning of Indic civilization; all Ireland; Mexican's "Olmec" Gulf and Basin zones; the Peruvian Initial Ceramic complexes; Chibchan Boyaca; Indonesian Sumatra (Ko-ying period); West African Kumbi Saleh; Mississippian (Adena) Ohio; Far Eastern (Shang) Yellow River valley; Japanese Nara; Central civilization's Fertile Crescent + Nile valley. There are many cases in which a semi- peripheral area, never before a core, rose to core status: the Egyptian North in the Old Kingdom; Mesopotamian Akkad in the Kish peri- od; Aegean Greece and Anatolia; Indic (Maurya) Patna, (Kushana) Peshawar, (Harshan) Kanauj; Mexican (Zapotec) Oaxaca; Peruvian (Early Horizon) Chavin, and then (Early Intermediate) most coastal and highland sites; Chibchan Cundirramarca; Indonesian (Ho-lo-tan) Java, (Malaccan) Malaya; West African (Malian) Timbuktu, perhaps Songhai Gao; Mississippian (Hopewell) Illinois; Far Eastern (Western Chou) Wei valley; Japanese (Heian) Kyoto, (Bakufu) Kamakura, and several Ashikaga cen- ters. In Central civilization, such first- time core entrants included Assyria, Persia, Greece (previously, however, an Aegean core), Macedonia, Rome, Byzantium, Western Europe, America, Russia. But there are several other cases in which a fallen core area has returned from semi- peripheral status, or has regained a solitude it had lost to upstart sharers. In Egyptian civilization: the south in dynasties XI and XVIII, the north in XII. In Mesopotamian civilization: Sumer/Uruk in the Early Dynastic c. 2850-2600; Sumer and Akkad alternatively 2500-1500. In Indic civilization: Patna under the Guptas. In Mexican civilization: the Basin during Teotihuacan, Toltec and Aztec periods. In Peruvian civilization: Cajamarca and Pachacamac in the Late Intermediate, after their eclipse by Huari in the Middle Horizon; Late Intermediate Chimu (replacing Early Intermediate Moche) after the Huari coreship. In Indonesian civilization: Sumatra during Kan-to-li and Srivijaya; Java during Madjapah- it. In Far Eastern civilization: the Wei valley under Ch'in. In Central civilization: Abbasid Mesopotamia, and the classic renais- sance of Renaissance Italy. In the transition from semiperiphery to core, history seems somewhat more favorable to naissance than to renaissance, but renaissan- ces do happen. Within-core differentiation. Different areas may serve as military-political, econom- ic, and cultural-religious cores, and core shifts may occur in these features at differ- ent times. The Norse cities were Ireland's economic core, the monasteries its cultural core, the Kingly seats the politico-military core: result, an all-core civilization. Chavin may have been only Peru's cultural center; Tiahuanaco may have been only a cul- tural, Huari only a military core. The Far Eastern politico-military core long tended to be north and west of the economic-demographic- cultural core. The Japanese religious, polit- ico-military and economic cores drifted apart in Kamakura and Ashikaga and were reunited in Tokugawa days. The most notable discrepancies between Central civilization's economic-tech- nical and politico-military cores are attested by being corrected: the shift from Rome to Constantinople, the Renaissance-ending inva- sions of Italy, the revolt of the Netherlands, the involvement of British finance and fleets in Continental wars, and the American entry into the World Wars of the 20th century. There is thus some tendency for geographically separated functions to be pulled together; the political-military core may conquer the others (the post-Renaissance invasions of Italy), migrate to them (by a movement of the capital, e.g., to Constantinople or Lo-yang) or usurp them (by taxation and subsidy, e.g., Tokugawa Edo); or economic cores may invest in politi- co-military potency (Dutch, British, Ameri- cans). Critique of Core-periphery Theory In the search for a core-periphery theory, principally a theory of core motion and change, we do not start entirely afresh. Two workers of note, the civilizationist Carroll Quigley and the world-systems analyst Immanuel Wallerstein, have elaborated definite proposi- tions about "cores." Their terminologies differ from that employed here; their proposi- tions are nonetheless of interest. Quigley on core and periphery. Quigley's spatial account of civilizations contains the following major propositions bearing on core- periphery issues. (1) Civilizations general- ly arise on the periphery of previous civili- zations, out of cultural mixture. (Quigley, 1961: 78-80.) (2) Since every new civiliza- tion has an instrument of expansion, such that within it "inventions begin to be made, sur- plus begins to be accumulated, and this sur- plus begins to be used to utilize new inven- tions," civilizations have early (and some- times recurring) stages of expansion -- of production, living standards, population, and -- through colonization -- of territory. The expansion process is one half of the major civilizational dynamic. (1961: 80-81.) (3) Expansion produces partition. "As a result of the geographic expansion of the society, it comes to be divided into two areas: the core area, which the civilization occupied [origi- nally], and the peripheral area into which it expanded during [its stage of expansion]" (1961: 81-82.). Here is our first termino- logical difference: I would agree that civili- zations expand into their periphery, but would then restyle the area expanded into as "semi- periphery." This term, of which so far as I know Quigley is the originator, he twice employs (1961:85); but more often he speaks of "more peripheral" and "less peripheral" areas (1966:85-87). (4) All civilizational instruments of expansion tend to become cor- rupted, "institutionalized," non-expansive. The slowdown of expansion is the other half of the major dynamic of civilizational change. (5) The slowdown of expansion is geographi- cally partitioned. "When expansion begins to slow up in the core areas, as a result of the instrument of expansion becoming institution- alized, and the core area becomes increasingly static and legalistic, the peripheral areas continue to expand...." Furthermore, as latecomers they can often imitate core suc- cesses while avoiding time-wasting blind alleys explored by core innovators; so the "peripheral areas...frequently short-cut many of the developments experienced by the core area. As a result, by the latter half of [the civilization's stage of expansion], the pe- ripheral areas are tending to become wealthier and more powerful than the core areas. Anoth- er way of saying this is that the core area tends to pass from [a stage of expansion] to [a stage of crisis and conflict] earlier than do the peripheral areas." (1961: 81-82.) (6) The slowdown of expansion produces, among other effects, tension and class conflict. (7) Because the crisis of expansion is geographically partitioned, it is particularly acute in the civilization's core area. (8) The crisis of expansion also produces imperi- alist wars intended to continue the local expansion of parts of the civilization, now at the expense of other parts. (9) The core suffers these wars first. (10) The imperial- ist wars lead to conquests that reduce the number of states in the civilization, eventu- ally to one. (11) The core is unified first: a core empire precedes a universal empire. (1961: 82-85). (12) "In the imperialist wars of [the stage of conflict] of a civilization the more peripheral states are consistently victorious over less peripheral states." Core empires are created by semiperipheral states, universal empires by fully peripheral states (1961: 85). Quigley's terminology is such that power for him can move, leaving the core behind; I would speak of the same phenomenon as the movement of the core into formerly semiperipheral areas. (13) What are the reasons for the habitual victory of more peripheral states over less peripheral states during the stage of conflict of any civilization? One is the general rule that "material culture diffuses more easily than nonmaterial culture, so that peripheral areas tend to become more materialistic than less peripheral areas; while the latter spend much of their time, wealth, energy, and atten- tion on religion, philosophy, art, or litera- ture, the former spend a much greater propor- tion of these resources on military, politi- cal, and economic matters. Therefore, periph- eral areas are more likely to win victories" (1961: 86-87). (14) A second reason "arises from the fact that the process of evolution is slightly earlier in more central areas than in peripheral ones," so that while more peripher- al areas are still in a stage of expansion, more central ones, in a later stage of devel- opment, "are more harassed by class conflicts and are more paralyzed by the inertia and obstruction of institutions," and generally have undergone and been weakened by a longer period of imperialist wars. Wallerstein on core and periphery. Immanu- el Wallerstein presents a distinctive idea of core and periphery. Cores and peripheries are features of multistate capitalist politico- economic structures ("world-economies") rather than of past one-state "world-empires," in that a world-economy has a geographical as well as a functional division of labor. "World-economies...are divided into core states and peripheral areas." Core states are advantaged, have weak or nonexistent indige- nous states (1974: 349). Core and periphery are features of capitalism: "world-empires had joined their 'edges' to the center by the collection of tribute, otherwise leaving relatively intact the production systems over which they had 'suzerainty', whereas the capitalist world-economy 'peripheralized' areas economically by incorporating them into the division of labor." (Hopkins, Wallerstein et al., 1982: 55.) Why is there regional polarization in capitalist world-economies? Wallerstein's various answers include definitional or func- tional requisiteness, geoeconomic regionalism (core-likeness) and force (unequal exchange). 1. Requisiteness. "[W]ithin a capitalist world-economy, all states cannot 'develop' simultaneously by definition, since the system functions by virtue of having unequal core and peripheral regions." (Wallerstein, 1975: 23.) 2. Geography. Production processes are linked in complex commodity chains (1983: 16). These chains have a directionality, raw-to- finished. Commodity chains have been geo- graphically convergent: "they have tended to move from the peripheries of the capitalist world-economy to the centres or cores" (1983: 30). The more easily monopolized processes are concentrated in core areas, the less skilled, more extensive manpower processes in "peripheral" areas (1984: 4-5). What "makes a production process core-like or periphery-like is the degree to which it incorporates labor- value, is mechanized, and is highly profit- able" (1984: 16). There are core states and periphery states because there "tend to be geographical localizations of productive activities such that core-like production activities and periphery-like production activities tend each to be spatially grouped together" (1984: 15). 3. Unequal exchange. "The exchange of products containing unequal amounts of social labor we may call the core- periphery relationship" (1984: 15). There is a parallel political polarization between strong core states and weaker peripheral states, "the 'political' process of 'imperial- ism' being what makes possible the 'economic' process of 'unequal exchange'" (1984:5). Unequal exchange "means, ultimately, the transfer of some of the surplus of any one area to a receiver of surplus in another" as "consequence of the fact that more labor power has gone into producing the value exchanged in one area than in the other." (1982: 94) Unequal exchange exists when commodities moving one way incarnate more "real input (cost)" than equally-priced commodities moving the other way (1983: 31). Unequal exchange existed pre-capitalism when one party to a market transaction used force to improve his price (1983: 30-31). Core zones are those which gain profit or surplus by unequal-ex- change transactions (1983: 31-32). In capi- talism, unequal exchange has been concealed by the fact that commodity chains cross state frontiers (1983: 31). Strong core state- machines keep peripheral state-structures weaker, their economies lower on the commodity chain, their wage-rates lower (1983: 32). This is done by force -- wars and coloniza- tion -- when there are significant political challenges to existing inequalities, otherwise by market supply-and-demand with an enormous apparatus of force latent (1983: 32-33). While in Quigley's terminology a semi- periphery is geographically intermediate between fully peripheral areas and the core (and thereby advantaged against the core in empire-building, but disadvantaged against the periphery), in Wallerstein's terms a semi- periphery is intermediate in other senses, especially the economic. "There always exist semiperipheral zones" (1984: 15). Seim- peripheral states "function as loci of mixed kinds of production activities" (1984: 15), have enterprises engaged in both "corelike" and "peripheral" processes. In moments of expansion of the world-economy, these states "serve to some extent as economic transmission belts and political agents" of some imperial core power. In periods of stagnation and crisis, core powers' hold on these states may be weakened; one or two, which are strong enough, may play among the rivals, erect new quasi-monopolies, displace some falling core power, and impose themselves as new core powers (1984: 7). Semiperipheral areas "are in between the core and the periphery on a series of dimensions, such as the complexity of economic activities, strength of the state machinery, cultural integrity, etc. Some of these areas had been core areas of earlier versions of a given world-economy. Some had been peripheral areas that were later promot- ed, so to speak, as a result of the changing geopolitics of an expanding world-economy." (1974: 349). Quigleyan semiperipheries are contingent products of geographic expansion; Wallerstein- ian semiperipheries are necessary aspects of a particular politico-economic form. "The semiperiphery is a necessary structural ele- ment in a world-economy. These areas play a role parallel to that played, mutatis mutan- dis, by middle trading groups in an em- pire....These middle areas (like middle groups in an empire) partially deflect the political pressures which groups primarily located in peripheral areas might otherwise direct against core states and the groups which operate within and through their state machin- eries." (1974: 349-350) The middle stratum in world-economies consists of the semiperipheral states. (1979: 23) "The three structural positions in a world economy -- core, periph- ery, and semiperiphery -- had become stabi- lized by about 1640." (1979: 18) In Wallerstein's theory, by contrast with Quigley's, cores move over time (1984: 103; 1974: 350; 1979: 33). New technologies render different commodities "high profit, high-wage" at different moments: "At first, wheat was exchanged against textiles; later textiles against steel; today steel against computers and wheat" (1984: 103). Quigley vs. Wallerstein. Quigley seems right to treat cores and peripheries as fea- tures of all civilizations, not simply of states-system periods or capitalist instru- ments of expansion. Universal empires cer- tainly have metropolitan cores. Quigley also seems correct to treat core-semiperiphery- periphery as always having primarily a spatial interpretation. But Wallerstein seems right to assert that cores move in space over time; this can be seem as a different way of perceiving what is implied in Quigley's contention that at least some semiperipheral and peripheral states have eventually succeeded in conquering their civilizations. If we adopt mobile-core lan- guage, Quigley's contention can then be trans- lated into the assertion that, simultaneously as states systems are displaced by universal empires, civilizational cores move long dis- tances onto latecomer territories, which, once peripheral, then incorporated into the semi- periphery, finally attain core status as the imperial metropole. Quigley seems right again to treat core- semiperiphery distinctions as growing in the first instance from a fact about motion in space over time (rather than from the statics of "capitalism"), in that expansion of civili- zations in space over time necessarily means that some regions will enter a civilization later than others. Quigley's causal mecha- nism, geographic expansion over time, seems sufficient to account for the origin of core- semiperiphery distinctions. Wallerstein's ideas again seem useful in accounting for the stability of core-periphery distinctions, over the time in which they do remain stable. Wallerstein's theory must however be generalized beyond capitalism and states-systems, since universal empires show persistence of their metropoles and capitals at century-plus timescales. The enormously uneven concentration of particular natural and social "endowments" (ores, soils, climates, water; ports, trade routes, crossroads, stron- gpoints) across the globe and each of its regions may combine with a prevalent technolo- gy (which renders such endowments "resources" during a particular epoch), with the inequali- ty of the distribution of human populations, and with the self-interested power of the core states/imperial metropoles to monopolize such endowments, to account for the long persis- tence of cores. But this needs comparative- empirical examination. The views of Quigley and Wallerstein on the question of the balance of advantage in eco- nomic expansion seem to differ. Quigley sees it as lying with the latecomers (because of delayed corruption, developmental short-cuts, and preferential diffusion of material cul- ture); Wallerstein as clearly sees it lying with the core states (greater force, stronger state-machines, unequal exchange). However, if we accept that cores do move, but only slowly, and are stable for significant peri- ods, the apparent differences can be recon- ciled: Quigley's cited forces may operate at longer timescales than Wallerstein's, and in the opposite direction. The additional vari- ables of technological stagnation (Quigley) or change (Wallerstein), at least if surprising or uncontrolled, and, more effectively and inescapably, core wars (Quigley), may help to account for core declines. Again comparative- historical study seems called for. It is not clear that the Wallersteinian concept of "unequal" exchange is viable as a description -- it seems to entail some variant of the problematic labor theory of value -- or as an explanation -- it seems to conflate force, which would plausibly explain involun- tary transfers of surplus, with technological inequality, which would plausibly explain voluntary exchanges of high-labor-output for low-input commodities. The degree to which goods trans-ports are characterized by either vs. both those mechanisms would seem to be an intriguing but empirical question. Once we accept that world systems as such -- not just capitalist world-economies -- have cores, it would seem to make sense that it is the polit- ico-military predominance of the core that accounts for the core's ability to drain the semiperiphery: loot, tribute, taxes, price controls, confiscations, trade route closures, and enforced monopolies are politico-military ventures, though for economic objectives. At the same time, it also seems clear that urban- ization, and eventually core status, has tended to move slowly toward major semi- peripheral supply sources, whose local popula- tions have then perhaps managed to extract maximum monopolistic advantage by establishing political control over their commodities' flows and prices; why they should be able to do so, and at what time scales, remain to be explored by students of the political manipu- lation of economic exchange. Again we need comparative studies, of core drainage and semiperipheral resistance. From semiperiphery to universal empire? In support of his proposition that universal empires are commonly the product of peripheral (in our terms, semiperipheral) states, Quigley offers numerous cases. While some of these do not conform to our criteria because they involve only one culture-area within a larger (i.e. Central) civilization, seven of Quig- ley's cases seem to offer support for his proposition even within our civilizational definitions. These seven cases are as follows. (1) Mesopotamian civilization: old core states like Uruk, Kish, Ur, Nippur, and Lagash were conquered by (preserving Quigley's terms) more peripheral states like Agade and Babylon, these by more peripheral Assyria, and the whole of western Asia by fully peripheral Persia. (2) In Minoan (Aegean) civilization the core area of Crete itself seems to have been conquered by peripheral Mycenae. (3) In Classical civilization (for us, in Central civilization, which is larger than "Classi- cal"), peripheral Macedonia and more peripher- al Rome rise to empire. (4) In Mesoamerica the Mayan core (seen by Quigley) is overcome by the semiperipheral Toltecs and these, in turn, by the fully peripheral Aztecs. (5) In the Andes, the coastal and northern highlands core are submerged by several more peripheral cultures, notably Tiahuanaco from the southern highlands, and the whole Andean civilization was conquered by the "fully peripheral" Incas from the "forbidding" central highlands. (6) In Far Eastern civilization, which Quigley divides into Sinic and Chinese, Chou, Ch'in and Han are seen as semiperipheral or periph- eral conquerors of the Huang Ho core, Mongols as remote, Ming and Manchu as peripheral. (7) In Indic civilization, divided by Quigley into Indic and Hindu, Harappa is suggested as a peripheral Punjab conqueror of a lower-valley (Sind) Chandu-Daro core, while Maurya is acknowledged a "local," i.e. core, dynasty. (1961:85-86.) Do these cases represent a general rule? If so, what? If we attend to the conquering peoples rather than their base areas, it does seem that many of those cited by Quigley were, a few centuries before their conquests, pe- ripheral or semiperipheral to the civilization they ultimately united, while peoples they conquered in their careers of empire were already in the core. Mycenae, Macedonia, Rome, Toltecs, Aztecs, Chou, Ch'in, Han, Mongols, perhaps Ming, Manchus, all seem to fit this mold. If we rephrase Quigley's proposition accordingly -- the conquering peoples of universal empires are in general recently promoted from semiperiphery and periphery rather than veteran or renascent members of the core -- is it correct? In Egypt: for the Old Kingdom, uncertain; for the Middle Kingdom, false; for the New Kingdom, false. In Mesopotamia: for Agade, uncertain; for Ur, false; for Babylon, uncer- tain. In Aegean: for Minoan, uncertain, probably not applicable; there seems not to have been a Mycenean universal empire, but if there had been, true for that. In Indic: for Harappa, uncertain; for Maurya, uncertain. In Mexican: if there had been a Toltec universal empire, true for that; for the Aztec universal empire, true. In Peruvian: if there had been either a Huari or a Tiahuanaco universal empire, true for it; for the Inca universal empire, true. Indonesian: for Srivijaya and Madjapahit, uncertain. West African: for Ghana, uncertain; for Mali, true; for Songhai, true. Far Eastern: for Ch'in-Han, true; for Sui-T'ang, true; for Mongol-Min-Manchu, true. Japanese: for Yamato uncertain; for Hideyoshi- Tokugawa probably true, if we refer to "clans" rather than "peoples." Central: for Assyrian, true; for Persian-Macedonian, true; for Roman, true. If we were to speak of areas rather than peoples, the proposition would be false for Agade, Babylon and the Aztecs, Srivijaya and Madjapahit. It is often the case, then, that the builders of a civilization's univer- sal empire are relative latecomers, to its network and to its core; less often, but still frequently, they begin their empire-building from a more recently incorporated territory than those they ultimately conquer. Whatever comparative advantages recent recruits may have in the imperialist drama seem likely to be both conditional and complex. CONCLUSION Civilizational cores may take any of several political forms, most frequently being: a single dominant or hegemonic state; several competing states; and the metropolitan region of a universal empire. Core areas expand and contract, the latter especially during hege- monic and universal-state epochs. Civiliza- tions usually have a semiperiphery, especially during such periods, but need not, and during states-system periods sometimes do not. Cores may move in a single prevailing direction, or shuttle. Old cores return, and new areas rise, to core status; history shows no marked favoritism to either process. Different areas may serve a civilization as its political- military, economic and cultural cores, though there is some tendency for the functions to go together or to drift together when parted. Recent arrivals to core status have some advantages in competitions to destroy states systems, but they are not overwhelming nor entirely self-evident. "Coreness" and "semiperipherality" are multidimensional phenomena, but certainly have politico-military, economic, technological, demographic, religious and cultural compo- nents. Politico-military driving variables seem more obvious and accessible to analysis than others, but are unlikely to function alone. Forces need to be posited to explain both the motions and changes of cores -- formations, expansions, pulsations, shuttles, drifts, evaporations -- and core persistence and stability. Interesting speculative questions about core-periphery include: can an all-core/no- core global society evolve? Would it require a states system? Does the end of the periph- ery increase the chances for an all-core/no- core society? or a freezing of current core- semiperiphery boundaries? or a speedup in core shift? or a narrowing of the core to a single hegemonic state or imperial metropole? NOTES