The Emergence of the Global Political Economy

by Black,Jeremy

• ISBN13: 9780415214520
• ISBN10: 0415214521
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-01-31
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

The Emergence of the Global Political Economychallenges assumptions that the international political economy is a recent phenomenon. Instead, this volume asserts that the current global political economy began to take shape around 1500 and that some of today's key processes were already perceivable hundreds of years ago. The author explains the interdependence between long-term economic growth, global political leadership and global war and how this interdependence has evolved over the past 500 years, and includes discussions of: the ascendance of Western Europe and the significance of the 1490s the military superiority thesis sequences of leadership and of challenge to the global political economy the importance of commodities from sugar and cloth to slaves and bullion.

Author Biography

William R. Thompson is Professor of Political Science at Indiana University.

Table of Contents

List of figures	vii
List of tables	viii
Preface	ix
PART I Introduction and overview	1	(36)
K-waves, leadership cycles, and global war: an orientation	3	(19)
Evolutionary and coevolutionary considerations	22	(15)
PART II The ascendance of western europe	37	(64)
The 1490s: a question of evolutionary (dis)continuity?	39	(15)
The divergent coevolution of two eurasian regions	54	(20)
The military superiority thesis	74	(27)
PART III The leadership challenge sequence	101	(56)
The emergence of a challenge process	103	(16)
Mountains of gold and iron	119	(15)
Challenges in the active zone	134	(23)
PART IV Structural change and evolution	157	(65)
Britain as a system leader in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries	159	(29)
The Anglo-American rivalry before World War I	188	(17)
Passing the torch in a manner of speaking: the system leader lineage	205	(17)
Notes	222	(11)
References	233	(13)
Index	246