ABSTRACT
World-system history, without a hyphen, asks a series of questions about global history that challenge many inherited assumptions.
[R]ecognizing the common existence of capitalist practices in East and West for much of world history allows us to reassess completely the overarching dynamic of the world system and the capital accumulation process on a world scale. This is the intention of world system theory: to reveal the common rhythms, the competition and rivalry, and the mutual influence among all the zones of the world economy over a period of several millennia, … with an objective structural emphasis on the process of capital accumulation on the world scale and the real patterns of this process, both in terms of the “long cycles” of world economic expansion and contraction, and the “center shifts” between rival economic and political power centers.
