Long 20th Century Pa (New Updated

Winner of the American Sociological Association PEWS Award for Distinguished Scholarship: a comprehensive analysis of the development of world capitalism over the millennium. The Long Twentieth Centurytraces the epochal shifts in the relationship between capital accumulation and state formation over a 700-year period. Building on the work of Fernand Braudel, Arrighi argues that the history of capitalism has unfolded as a succession of "long centuries"--ages during which a hegemonic power deploying a novel combination of economic and political networks secured control over an expanding world-economic space. The book concludes with an examination of the forces which have shaped and are now poised to undermine America's world power. Now a classic of history and sociology, the book is fully updated in the light of recent events.

Giovanni Arrighi (1937-2009) was Professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University, and one of the foremost scholars of world systems analysis and historical sociology. His books include Adam Smith in Beijing, The Geometry of Imperialism and, with Beverly Silver, Chaos and Governance in the Modern World System.