[1993] André Gunder Frank. Latin America at the Margin of World System History (In: Comparative Civilizations Review n° 28, Spring, pp. 1-40)

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COMPARATIVE CIVILIZATIONSR V I W

No. 28 Spring 1993

Latin America at the Margin of World System Historyndre GUilder Frank

Cities, Civilizations and Oikumenes: II

David Wilkinson

Polycultures and Culture-Civilizations·A Iberall l ld D. ilkinsoll

Gold, Islam and Camels: The TransformativeEffects of Trade and Ideology

lice Willard

The Camel and Its Role n ShapingMideastern Nomad Societies

Ralph W Brauer

ORUM

The Care and Keeping of ScrollsJ a m e ~C Vanderkam

Ethics and Access: The Case of the Dead Sea ScrollsMichael O. Wise

Comments on John K Hord s Civilization:A Definition: Part II. The Nature of Formal Knowledge Systems

David Richardsoll

I S C S CINTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR THE COMPARATIVE STUDY OF CNILIZATIONS



The Comparative Civilizations Review No. 28

Editors:Vytautas KavoHs

Department of SociologyDickinson CollegeCarlisle, PA 17013

Wayne BledsoeDepartment of HistoryPolitical ScienceUniversity of Missouri at RollaRolla, MO 65401

Managing Editor:Mich el P. Richard

Professor EmeritusState University of New York11530 SW 99th StreetMiami, FL 33176

Book Review Editor:David WilkinsonDepartment of Political Sci e nc eUniversity of California

Los Angeles, CA 90024Corresponding Editors:

Boris ErasovInstitute of Oriental StudiesMoscow, Russia

Ronan FanningUniversity College

Dublin, Ir eland

Robert HoltonThe Flinders UniversityBedford Park, South Australia

Shiu-Lam-Danny PaauHong Kong Baptist College

Kowloon, Hong Kong

Editorial Advisory Board:Adda B. Bozeman Sarah LawallSarah Lawr ence Colleg e University of Massachusetts

Michel CarierEcole des Hautes Etudesen Sciences Sociales, Paris

Marija GimbutasUniversity of Californiaat Los Angeles

Shuntaro ItoInternational Research CenterFor Japanese StudiesKyoto, Japan

David KopfUniversity of Minnesota

Bernard LewisPrinceton University

A. R. D. PagdenUniversity of Cambridge

Denis SinorIndiana University

Pei-yi WuColumbia University

Hayden WhiteUniversity of Californiaat Santa Cruz

Publithed at the Univenity of Mi ouri It Rolli, Rolli, MO 65401. Copyricht 1993 byinterDitiOlll.l Society fill the ComplCltive Study of CiviliZitioal. Indexed ill; CurrelUContClitoiArtI II Humillitiel Citation Index, MLA IntC1lllltional Biblio,IJraphy, SociologicalAb l tr et l . SublCriptiOIl I ; $15 a year for illidividuall, $20 I year for ililtiwtioni.SUblCriptiO thould be l ent to Nonna Barton, Prognm in Comparative Literature, 2070 FLB-707 South Math_I The Univenity of lllinoil, Urbllll, n 61801.

ISSN 0733-4540



ONTENTS

Foreword a y n ~M Bledsoe

Latin America at the Margin of WorldSystem History Andr/ Gundu Frank

Cities, Civilizations and Oikumenes: II David WUldnscn 41

HPolycultures M and Culture·Civilizations A. lberall and D Wilki nson 73

Gold, Islam and Camels: The TransformativeEffects o f Trade and Ideology l i a Witlar d 80

Th e Camel and Its Role in Sh api ngMideastern Nomad Societies

Forum

Th e Care and Keeping of SeroUs

Elhics and Access; The Case o f the Dead

Sea Scro lls

Comments on John K Hard s Civilization:A Definition: Part II. The Nature of FormalKnowl edge Systems

Ralph W Bra u u 106

James C Vanderkam ]52

ichael W/.$l 161

David Richards on 166



LATIN AMERICA AT THE MARGINOF WORLD SYSTEMHISTORY: EAST > WEST HEG EM ONIAL

SHIFTS 992-1492-1992)

ANDRE GUNDER FRANK

' In te rna t iona l t ra de , ' thus , a 'wor ld t r ad e ' . . . which wen t i ts way f ro m oneend of the world to another . . . can be viewed as an 'h is tor ical constant . '

N o qual i ta t ive t ran sform at ion s ca n be indicated in the co urs e of h is tor y.J . C. van Leur (1955: 87) .Indonesian Trade and Society: Essays inAsian Social and Economic History

I t has not be en su ff ic ient ly app recia te d that a theo ry of cycl ical chan ge a lsoinclude s a theory of shif ts of cen tres in spa ce. In othe r w or d, exp ans ionand contr ac t ion pro ces ses ha ve rarely bee n s table . . . Osci l la t ions in

in t racore hegemony a re in te rspersed by much la rger sca le sh i f t s inarrangements of centres and their per ipher ies . . . I t i s u l t imately thetemporal that i s seen to dominate over the spat ia l shif ts in the waxing andwaning of par t i cu la r cen t res .

Michae l Rowlands (1987)Centre and Periphery in the Ancient World

A World System Introduction

This paper views Latin American from the perspective of worldsystem history and its long cycles for over a thousand years.Viewed from this perspective, Latin American was outside theworld system for several millennia until its incorporation in 1492.Then, as part of one of the cyclical upswings of the world system,what came to be known as Latin America was incorporated into thesam e. H ow eve r, the world system incorporated Latin Am erica intoa marginal, subordinate and dependent position on this system fromwhich it has never em erge d. Indeed , durin g the previou s and againthe present cyclical crises in the history of the world system, LatinAmerican has been even further marginalized.

1



2 C O M PA R AT I V E C I V I L IZ AT I O N S R E V I E W

This review of world system history and Latin America's place

within it will draw on five analytical categories:- 1 . The World System: This paper con tends, per contra W allerstein(1974), that the existence and development of the present worldsystem stretches back at least 5,000 years (Frank 1990, 1991a,b;Gills and Frank 1990/91, 1992; Frank and Gills 1992).- 2 . The Process of Cap ital Accum ulation as the Motor Force ofWorld System History: W allerstein and others regard continuous

capital accumulation as the differentia specifica of the "m odernw orld -sys tem ." I have argued elsewhere that in this regard the"modern" world system is not so different and that this sameprocess of capital accumulation has played a, if not the, central rolein the world system for several millennia (see especially Frank1991b and Gills and Frank 1990/91 as well as replies by Amin1991 and by W allerstein 1991, the latter also on the di ffer en ce a

hyphen [-] makes, which are also included in Frank and Gills1993).- 3 . The Center-Periphery Structure in and of the World System:This structure is familiar to analysts of dependence in the "modern"wo rld system and especially in Latin Am erican since 1492. (F ran k,1967). H ow ev er, I now find that this analytical catego ry is alsoapplicable to the world system before 1492.- 4. The Alternation Between Hegem ony and Rivalry or the RegionalHegemonies and Rivalries to Succeed the Previous Hegemon: Theworld system and international relations literature has recentlyproduced many good analyses of alternation between hegemonicleadership and rivalry for hegemony in the world system since1492, for instance by Wallerstein (1979), or since 1494 byM odelski (1987) and by Modelski and Tho m pson (1988). Ho wev -er, hegemony and rivalry for the same also mark world systemhistory long before that (Gills and Frank 1992; Frank and Gills1992a,b; 1993).- 5 . Long and Short Econom ic Cycles of Alternating Ascending(sometimes denominated A ) Phases and Descending (sometimesdenominated B Phases: In the real w orld historical process theselong cycles are also associated with each of the previous categories.That is, an important characteristic of the "modern" world systemis that the process of capital accumulation, changes in center-



Andre Guilder Frank 3

periphery position within it, as well as world system hegemony and

rivalry, are all cyclical and occur in tandem with each othe r. Formy part, I analyzed the same for the "modern" world system underthe title World Accum ulation 1492-1789 and Dependent Accumula-tion and Underdevelopment (Frank 1978a ,b). H ow ever, I now findthat this same world system cycle and its features also extends backmany centuries before 1492.

The year 1492 represents a significant moment in the world

system cycle. Nonetheless from a longer world system p erspec tive,the significance of 1492 and the place of Latin America in theworld system should be viewed in its proper historical context.Therefore, this essay offers an analysis of world system historybeginning a millennium before 1492 and continuing a half millenni-um after this historic date (B.C . 492-199 2 A .D .). The focus willbe on the long cycles both before and after 1492 (Gills and Frank1992; Frank and Gills 1992a,b; Frank 1992.) These cycles seemto have given rise to the significance of 1492 in the first plate andto have marked the vagaries of Latin America's place in the worldsystem ever since. Viewed in that longe r and cyclical historica lcontext, the position of Latin America in the world has been andremains unfavorab le to most of its inhabitants. If what becam e"Latin America" had a "golden age," it was while it was effectivelyoutside the world system until 1492. Since Latin Am erican wasfirst incorporated into the world system in a subordinate, dependentand marginal position, already mentioned above, it is now beingmarginalized even more.

During the more than a 1,000 year history of the center-peripherystructured world system in whose middle 1492 falls, the hegemoniccenter has always moved from East to West, but only around thenorthern hem isphere. The hegemonic center, when there was one,

moved across Asia, West Asia and North Africa (now called the"Middle East") to Southern and then to Northwest Europe (at thewestern fring e of Eurasia). Then the hegem onic center movedacross the Atlantic to eastern and then increasingly perhaps westernNorth Am erica. Now political economic heg em ony, if there isagain to be any, seems to continue its westward move across thePacific back to Asia again, beginning with Japan and perhaps in the

future returning again back to China.



4 C O M PA R A T I V E C I V I L I Z AT I O N S R E V I E W

Throughout the history of the world system, its economic and

political hegemonic center has never been in Latin America or else-w here in the southern hem isphere. Inde ed, Latin A m erica has beeneven m ore marginal than parts of A frica and Asia. Som e of thelatter participated in the center or in hegemonical rivalries in thepast and we re only later peripheralized and m arginalized. Ev enthen, however, Asians and Africans remained economically andpolitically more integrated in the world system and nonethelessmaintained much more of their own culture than the native peoplesof the Am ericas. Th ese, as a result of the political eco nom ic,ecological and demographic disaster that befell them since 1492,also lost most of their ow n culture. Th e incorporation of thesenative "Americans" and indeed the participation of many of theirimmigrant "Latin" American "creoles" in the system served only todespoil them of their world and wealth for the benefit of the North.M ore ov er, even what [in wo rld terms] little prod uctive econom icapparatus they were able to develop f or themselves now leaves themunab le to com pete effectively in the wo rld econo m y. At the 500thanniversary of its incorporation therein, the world system economiccycle and hegemonical shift is once more further marginalizingLatin America.

The present work will review these cyclical ups and downs andhegemonical shifts in the world system structure and process overthe more than 1,000 years, in which 1492 A.D. is the mid-point.It shall not be amiss if extra attention is devoted to the politicaleconomic structure and cycle in the world system, especially in theold wo rld in the half millennium bef ore 1492. All the m ore so,since others w ill com m em orate 1492 by concentrating on the halfm illennium since then and on culture be for e and after the inco rpora-tion of the New World.

World System Development Cycles to 992

The world system and its cyclical development emerges from therelations established among Egypt, the Levant, Anatolia, Mesopota-mia, Persia, the Indus Valley, and parts of Central Asia in the thirdm illennium B .C . It is possible to identify a w orld systemic

economic cycle with ascendant and descendant/contractive phases




of roughly 200 years each and corresponding shifts in hegemony

since around 2000 B.C. and into the third millennium B.C. (Gillsand Frank 1993b). M uch later, the simultaneous rise of Han C hina,Ku shan India, Parthian P ersia and Im perial Rom e in the period 100B.C. - 200 A.D. and their simultaneous decline again in the period200 - 500 A.D. were manifestations of an already existing andongoing Afro-Eurasian world system wide economic cycle.

A new period of nearly world system wide economic expansion

began in the 6th century - not long after 492 - and lasted into thesecond half of the 8th cen tury . Th e Sassanid em pire regainedstrength and acquired the key Syrian entrepot of Antioch . Sassanidcampaigns of expansion in the early 7th century brought its powerto Anatolia, the Levant and Eg ypt. Byzantium, or the Rom anempire in the east, also expanded during the 6th century, whenBelisarius undertook successfu l reconq uests in the west. Both

empires seriously over-extended and then exhausted each other ina final debilitating war in the 7th century . In India, Sri Harsh arebuilt a north Indian hegemony from the city of Kanauj in the 7thcentury . In China, reunification occurred under the Sui Dy nasty inthe later part of the 6th century.

The second half of the 6th and the 7th centuries witnessedcom mercial and political expansion in various regions. From thesecond half of the 6th century A.D., much of Central Asia wasconquered and reorganized by the Tu rks. They expanded w estwardto dom inate the entire area fro m M anchu ria to the Aral Sea. Th erole of the Turks in trans-Central Asian trade and its importance tothem has been noted by several authors, among them Luc Kwanten(1979) and Christopher Beckwith (1987). H ow ever, the Turk ishem pire(s) did not last long. In the 7th and 8th centuries they g aveway to the Tang Dynasty expanding westward from China, theTibetan empire expanding northwards, the Muslims overrunningIraq and Persia and expanding eastward, the Byzantines still holdingtheir ow n, and the Frankish em pire rising in W estern Eu rope. Th eIslamic caliphate and the "w orld" econom y around it, so m asterfullyanalyzed by Hodgson (1974) and Lombard (1975), probably becamethe driving forc e, with the drive rs seat in Baghdad. The city wasfounded in 762 A.D. and by the year 800 already had a populationof two million.



6 C O M PA R AT I V E C I V I L I Z AT I O N S R E V I E W

The unification of Mesopotamia, Egypt and Central Asia under

one hegemonic structure gave the Ummayyad and its successor theAbbassid Dy nasty, seated in Bag hdad , a heg em onic econo m ic andpolitical position in m uch of the w orld system. Th e Abb assid andTang empires clashed head on in Central Asia in the mid-8thcentury . Th e battle of Talas in 75 1 con firm ed Abb assid super-hegemony and accelerated Tang decline.

In his The Venture of Islam, Marshall Hodgson (1974) examined

the Abbassid High Caliphate from 692 to 945 and especially itsperiod of "flow ering" and com m ercial expansion until 81 3. Tointroduce his examination of the Muslim Caliphate however,Hodgson observed

Th is per io d was on e of grea t pr os pe r i ty . I t i s not c lear ho w fa r this wasthe case th roughout the Afro-Euras ian Oikoumene , bu t a t l eas t in China a ttha t t ime what may be ca l led a ' commerc ia l revolu t ion ' was tak ing p lace .Un der the s t rong go vern m ent of the Ta ng Dynas ty . . . co m m erc e becam emuch more ex tens ive and more h igh ly organized . . . The Chinese economicact ivi ty was direct ly ref lected in the t rade in the Southern Seas ( the IndianOcean) and seas eas tward , where Chinese por t s became an impor tan tterminus for Musl in vessels . . . i t can be surmised that the commercial l i feof the lands of Musl im rule was given a posi t ive impetus by the greatact ivi ty in China, especial ly consider ing the important connect ions withChina bo th v ia the Southern Seas and over land through cen t ra l Euras ia .In any cas e , com m erc e a lso en joyed the grea t benef i t o f an ex tended pea cewith the cal iphate was able to ensure within i ts domains (Hodgson 1974:I , 234-5) .

However, i t may be possible to clarify further Hodgson's doubtsabout the extend of prosperity throughout the Afro-EurasianEcum ene during this period . Fro m the mid-7th century came therise and expansions of Taika and Nara Japan, Silla Korea, and TangChina in the East. Ch ina expan ded southw ard and increased traderelations with Ch am pa in Indo china . Th e Silendras establishedthemselves at key trading entrepots at the tips of Malaya, Sumatraand Java, astride the direct and indirect trade routes between China,the Arab ian Sea and the Persian Gu lf via India. At the sam e time ,the Chinese and the Turks also expanded westward, the Tibetans

northward, the Muslims eastward, the Scandinavians southward,




and the Byzantines consolidated and held their own as best they

could. M eanw hile, Indian, Persian, and Axu m pow er in EastAfrica declined or was replace by these expansions and rivalries.Trade through North Africa began to flourish, both along its East-West axis and southward across the Sahara to the sources of goldin W est A frica. W est Europeans languished fo r another centuryuntil Charles the Great was crowned in 800 A. D . Yet even thenits trade with the Eastern M editerranean languished. Egyptprospered under the Tulunins in the second half of the 9th century.Is it unlikely that these far- flung developments o ccurred simulta-neously only by historical accident. It seems much more likely thatthey were "a sequence of repercussions in a chain of quite unex-pected consequences in all four corners of this immense zone"going through Central Asia, to recall the terminology of Grousset(1970: 32).

This chain of repercussions also included what appears to havebeen a set of "regional" but very widespread political crises in themid-8th cen tury . Beckwith notes:

The Eighth cen tury saw the deve lopment of se r ious c r i ses , and majorecon om ic , po l i ti ca l and cu l tura l chan ges , in every im por tan t euras ian s ta te .Topologica l ly speaking , these changes fo l lowed more or l ess the same pa t -te rn , due no doubt to the i r, common or ig in in in te rna t iona l , spec i f ica l ly

economic change, of a fundamental nature . . . I t i s a cur ious fact that ,unl ike the preceding and fol lowing centur ies , the middle of the e ighthcentury - spec i f ica l ly the per iod 742 to 755 - saw fu nda m enta l ch ang es ,usual ly s ignaled by succ essfu l pol i t ical revo l ts , in ev ery Eur asia n em pi re .Mos t f am ous am ong them a re t he Ca ro l ign ian , Abbas id , U ighur Tu rk ic ,and ant i -T 'ang rebel l ions each of which is , r ight ly considered to have beena m aj or wa tershe d in the respe ct ive nat ion al his to r ies . Sig nif ic ant ly , a l lseem to have been in t imate ly connec ted wi th Cent ra l Euras ia (Beckwi th

1987: 192).

Tang power and the regime of the Tang Dynasty never reallyrecovered from this external defeat at Talas River in 751 and theinternal Lu-shan rebellion fro m 755 to 763 . Th e weakened T angDynasty hung on until 907, after another major rebellion from 874and 883. Ch ina lost all its western territories ag ain; and the Turk s,



8 C O M PA R A T I V E C I V I L IZ AT I O N S R E V I E W

along with much of Central Asia - eventually right up to the Great

Wall of China - became Muslim.A century later in the course of the four years 838 to 842, asBeckwith (1977) notes, in the West the trade route between theVolga and the Baltic was closed in 838 (not to reopen for anothergeneration), and the Frank ish Em pire bro ke up in 840 . In the East,the Uighur Empire fell to the Kirghiz in 840, the Tibetan Empirewas split up in 842, and the same year began the open persecutionof Buddhism and then of other foreig n religions in China. At thesame time (after the Arab-Byzantine war of 837-42 and Turkishexpansion), the last Caliph in Baghdad began the persecution ofheretics un der Islamic rule. Ag ain, it seems unlikely that thesepolitical and cultural events are entirely responses to "internal"pressures that are unrelated to each other. M or e likely, they w erealso related to each other and to economic problems or even anotherwidespread economic crisis, which was common to them all andtransmitted through Central Asia.

The 9th and 10th centuries may still have been a period ofeconom ic slow dow n. They also witnessed imp ortant setbacks tosome regional powers, which resulted in greater opportunities forothers to establish them selves. Tan g Ch ina languished and thendecline d, especially in its relations with Ce ntral Asia. T he Tangdecline opened spaces for the temporary growth of some regionalpo w ers, such as the Uigh urs and then the Kirg iz. At the other endof Central Eurasia in the 10th century, Egypt experienced economicdifficu lties and declining real wages (A shtor 1976: 153-54).Elsewhere, "the boom in the Near Eastern economies camesuddenly to an end and the unity of the Moslem empire wasshattered" (Ashtor 1976: 115). This auth or lays part of the blameon a 14-year revolt by slaves that began in southern Mesopotamiabeginning 869 A. D.

The growth and power of Baghdad failed to continue and itscaliphate began its "disintegration," as Ashtor entitles his chapteron the sam e. T rad e with India and China was diminished (Ashtor1976: 147). Lo m bard (19 71: 126) dated the "onset of the declineof Baghdad from the end of the 10th century; it continued in the11th century under the Seliuk Turks and was completed when thetown was captu red by [the M on gol] Hulagu in 12 58." "It is evident




that the decline of Baghdad [as well as Basra] and of the centrality

of the Gulf route [to the Orient] is explainable only in part bypurely local and exclusively economic fac tors . It can be ful lyunderstood only within the context of changes in the geopoliticalsystem of the larger region, and indeed, of the world system"(Abu-Lughod 1989: 192).

EXPANSION, CRISIS, AND RENEW ED EXPANSION: 995-1492Expansive A Phase 1000/1150 - 1250/1300

Beginning soon after 992, the 11th and 12th centuries andperhaps more precisely the years 1050 to 1250 were another periodof widespread economic growth.

For instance, Wallerstein notes

The feuda l sys tem in wes te rn Europe seems qu i te c lea r ly to have opera tedby a pa t tern of cyc les of ex pan sion and con tract io n of two lengths : c i rc a50 years and c i rca 200-300 yea rs . . . T he pa t te rns o f the expan s ions andcontract ions are c lear ly la id out and widely accepted among those wri t ingabout the la te Middle Ages and ear ly modern t imes in Europe . . . I t i s thelong swing tha t was c ruc ia l . Th us 1 05 0-1 25 0+ w as a t ime of theexpa nsion of Eu ro pe (the C rus ad es , the colon izat ions) . . . Th e "cr is is" orgrea t con t rac t ions of 12 50 -14 50 + inc luded the Black P lague (1 989b :33, 34) .

Of cou rse, W allerstein and others limit their reference to "feud al"Europe . Th e legitimacy o r not of this limitation has been debatedby W allerstein (1989 , 1991) and Fra nk (1991b). Th ere is am pleevidence to support my belief that both the cycle and this period ofexpansion within it were wo rld system -w ide. Indeed, that was amajor reason for the commercial ventures of the Crusades hementions; as well as for the prosperity, but also the rivalry ofVenice, Genoa, and the other south European city states, whoincreasingly turned eastward to connect up with the growingprofitable trans-Asian trade.

Several other regions around the world also prospered during thisper iod. Th eir simultaneous and interrelated grow th and declinehave recently been analyzed by Janet Abu-Lughod (1989) under the



1 0 C O M PA R AT I V E C I V I L I Z AT I O N S R E V I E W

title Before European Hegemony: The World System A. D. 1250-

1350.Forem ost amon g the regions of expansion was China. Du ringthis period the Song consolidated their empire in China, amidspectacular popu lation grow th and econ om ic exp ansion . T heChinese population grew to 150 million, the city of Hangchow to5-6 million and Kaifeng to 3-4 million [where by comparisonVenice, Europe's biggest and most trade dependent city reached160 ,000 ], Tech nological revolution , increased agriculturalproductivity, large scale industrial production, construction of vastnetworks of overland transportation and navigable inland waterway,widespread commercialization, high finance, sumptuary consump-tion, and expansive domestic and foreign trade all characterized theSong perio d. No netheless, the Song nev er regained the hege m oni-cal political position in Cen tral Asia, which the Tang had lost. Onthe contrary, throughout the Song period and until the Mongolconquest, China was "among equals" (to use the revealing title byM orris Rossabi 1982) am ong her neig hb ors. Indee d, Ch ina was onthe defensive against repeated threats and incursions by its alsoeconomically and politically expanded neighbors in Central Asia,the Kara Khitai empire in particular, and in Manchuria.

Moreover,

th is exte rna l threat was not witho ut effe ct on the social and eco no m ichis tor y of the Su ng age . It dete rm ined the w ho le Chine se pol icy f ro m theend of the 10th century to the end of the 13th century . . . Cut off fromaccess to central Asia , b locked in i ts expansion towards the north andnorth-west by the great empires which had ar isen on i ts f ront iers , theCh ine se w orld turn ed resolutely to the sea. I ts cen ter of grav i ty shif tedtow ards the trad ing and m ar i t ime reg ions of the south-eas t , which w ereextended inland by the enormous network of the Yangtze and i ts t r ibutar-ies . T h e sea rou tes s tar t ing fr om the Ab basid em pi re and con nec t ing thePers ian Gulf with India , South-East Asia , and the Chinese coast no doubtplayed a par t in this cal l of the sea . . . China was the greates t mari t imepo w er in the wo r ld (Gerne t 1982: 30 0 , 328 , 326 ) .

Before that the Indian coasts and especially Southeast Asia andChina experienced a centuries-long economic boom, that began inthe 11th century, and manifested itself in fast growing intra- and



Andre Guilder Frank 1 1

interregional trade. Indians, M alays, "Indon esians," and Chinese

were especially active in inter-regional trade to the east of India.On the other side, Indians, Persians and of course Arabs wereactive on the W est aide of the Indian sub-co ntinen t. As Janet Abu-Lughod (1989) stressed, in the West Asian/East Mediterraneanregion Baghdad, Basra and the Persian G ulf rou te declined . On e ofthe reasons was that it was in the interest of the now risingGenovese to favor the more northerly route through the Black Seaor for the Venetians to favor the more southerly one through theRed Sea. The developm ent of the latter also benefitted rival Cairo,which consequently rose to prominence with a population of500,000 under the Mamluks in the 13th and early 14th centuries.They even repulsed the M ong ols. "Egypt was a vanguard fo r theworld system" (Abu-Lughod 1989: 227).

Both befor e and a f te r the dom ina t ion of the M am luk s , Egy pt had a d i rec tl ink to India and the East Indies and pushed i ts communicat ion system asf a r a s M oha m m eda n Spa in and the w es t e rn [ s ic ] M ag hre b . Th us , Egyp tw as the fo rer un ne r of Por tu gal . . . At th is t im e in Ca iro . . . a gro up ofweal thy people had a hor izon which included near ly a th i rd of the wholewor ld (Chaunu 1979: 58 quotes in Abu-Lughod 1989: 227) .

Venice and Cairo established a "marriage of convenience" in the

attempt to m onopolize the Asian-M editerranean trade between themin com petition with their rivals. Th ese included Genoa and itsattempt to monopolize the Black Sea route.

Thus, the 1050-1250 expansion already brought with it thebeginnings of an economic westward shift through the Mediterra-nean and along its North African and South European coasts. TheGenovese and then the Mallorcans and Catalans became increasing-

ly active in East-W est trad e. At the same tim e, M uslim trade andcities grew, including Cordoba in Spain; and in, competition withthem, the Christian Reconquest by the Aragonese and Castilliansbegan. First com petition fro m Ven ice and only much later theOttoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453 propulsed theGenovese to expand westward through the Mediterranean and outinto the Atlantic instead.



1 2 C O M PA R A T I V E C I V IL I ZAT I O N S R E V I E W

However, especially in the hands of the Genovese and the

Catalans, trade prospered in the Western Mediterranean andincreasingly exten ded out into the Atlantic in the 11th, 12th and13th centuries. A fter G ibraltar, it turned both northw ard tow ardsnorthwest Europe and southward to the newly discovered CanaryIslands and on aroun d W est A fric a. Simu ltaneously, C hristianspushed their "reconquista" of the Muslim domains in Spain eversouthw ard. Both wo uld eventually culminate in 1492 with thesimultaneous expulsion of the "Moors" and Jews from Spain andthe "discovery" of American by a Genovese navigator and merchantshipper, who was already trained in Atlantic voyages to theCanaries.

In Central Asia in the meantime, the Yamini dynasty of Ghazni(near Kabul) also consolidated a new hegemony, ruling fromHamadan and Isfahan in Persia to the headwater of the Ganges inNorthw est India. Tu rkish peop les fro m Central Asia expa ndedwe stward and reached Anatolia. They w ere then Islamicized andlater created the Muslim Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey.Tu rks also began a systematic conq uest of India in the 12th ce ntu ry.This process culminated in the consolidation of the vast hegemonicstate of the Sultanate of Delhi, which by 1235 ruled from Sing toBen gal. Such was the strength of this consolidation in Ind ia, witha centralized administration and standing army, that the Sultanatesuccessfully repelled the Mongol invasion led by Genghis Khan.

Crisis B Phase 1250/1300 - 1450 A. D.

The expansion and consolidation of the Mongol empire began at theend of this long period of expansion and at the onset of a newperiod of con traction. Th e M on go ls used their military su periorityto exploit the situation on a larger and more successful scale thanany of their Inner Asian predec esso rs. Th ey struck first at the C hinin north China. Geng his und ertook the conquest of Ce ntral Asiaagainst the M uslim em pire of K hw arizm . Th e seizure of CentralAsia gave the Mongol imperium the opportunity to assume aposition of supe r-accum ulator in the wo rld system. H ow ev er, theease of Mongol conquest in Persia and Mesopotamia was facilitatedby the weak ness of the M uslim states in W est Asia. T he econ om i-




cally still stronger state in Egypt was able to resist and repel theM ongo l advance. Ho w ever, elsewhere the econom ic decline hadalready begun be fo re the M ongols arrived. Th en, the econom icdownturn that began from the middle of the 13th century was madeeven more severe by the widespread destruction that accompaniedM ongo l conquests, both in the East and in the W est. F or instance,the progress in urbanization and trade in Russia of the earlierexpansion period was virtually eliminated in the Mongol conquest.Most of the cities (Novgorod excepted) were destroyed, andeconomic retrogression deepened therea fter. Th eref ore, despiteMongol consolidation of a vast Eurasian hegemony, an economicdownturn of severe proportions affected most of the continentduring M ongol tenure . In this respect the hegem ony of theMongols differs from the more usual case of hegemonic expansionduring a period of economic upswing.

The collapse of the Mongol imperium in the mid-14th centurymight be taken as evidence of a w orld system crisis. If it wasindeed the culmination of a "down" phase, it would be necessary toquestion Abu-Lughod's characterization of 1250-1350 as a general-ized "up" phase. Yet Abu-Lughod (1989) herself cites am pleevidence that transport and other infrastructural investment andexpansion in Venice, Genoa, and in the eastern Mediterranean haddeclined and halted at least two decades befo re the arrival of theplague in 1348. In a later essay, sh e says that prosp erity peaked inthe opening decades of the 14th century, after which signs ofdecline were already evident (Abu-Lughod 1990: 5,7).

If the construction and collapse of the Mongol imperium didcoincide with a down phase, as in Wallerstein's periodization, thenthis may raise a new possible explanation for the failure of theM ongol im perium . Traditional explanation of the failure of theMongols as a ruling class to consolidate their imperium revolvesaround the theme of their nomadic social organization and itspresumed inherent limitations for such a task ["you can conquer,but you cannot rule from ho rseb ack "]. It is true that the unity ofthe empire was destroyed early on, in 1260, due to dynasticsuccession strugg les. But if the world economy w as already on thedownturn by 1250, this itself could help explain why the Mongols

could so easily set up their conquest states (except in India) on the




back of their already depressed rivals. H ow ev er, the sam e wo rld

economic depression could then also help account for the Mongols'inability to maintain their power, and why they and everybody elsewent (temporarily) "to hell in a hand basket."

During the 1250-1450 period of crises, especially those of 1315-20 and that associated with the Black Death around 1348, pricesdeclined in Eu rop e and perh aps elsewh ere. T he general econo miccrisis spelled the decline of the Mediterranean Marllorca andBarcelona, both absolutely and especially relative to inland Valenciaand Castilla and in competition with them in turn, the Portuguese.Prices also continued to dec line in the 15th centu ry. As especiallyVilar (1969) argues, lower prices rendered gold more valuable andstimulated the search for new sources of gold, especially in Africa.This search for gold in turn drove the exploration and traffic intothe Atlantic and its islands. Th is exp ansion includ ed the enslave -ment and genocide of the population and the ecological destructionof the Canaries that presaged the same around the coast of WestA frica — and eventually across the Atlantic. At the sam e time,competition in these commercial ventures and the thirst for goldalso helped fuel the Reconquest.

Moreover, European trade with Egypt and the Levant wascondu cted primarily through payme nt in bullion . This stimulatedan even greater need for sources of bullion in the West and inAfrica and the desire to by-pass the Alexandrian and Venetianmiddlemen if possible by finding a direct sea route to India and theSpice Islands. W hen Portugal and Spain discovered such routes,backed by Italian finance capital, the result was a drastic shift in thelogistical nexus of the world system and a concomitant shift in thelocus of the accum ulation. Cen tral Asia ceased to be the key nodein the wo rld logistical nexu s. Nonethe less as will be obse rved

below, this shift still required to more centuries.For according to Palat and Wallerstein (1990) by the end of the

14th century in India,

The Indian subcontinent emerged from this crisis as a core production area ofcotton texti les in the world economy and became the beneficiary of a hugeinflow of bullion as a result of tra de surplus. Ind ia's trad e with W est Asia

increased exponentially over the next several centuries and tied the economicfates of cities on both sides of the Arabian sea closely together . . . At the same




time, the maritime trade of India to the east, connecting to the China-Malaytrade experienced a new resurgence, following Song China's decision to lift itsearlier ban on merchant trade (Palat and Wallerstein 1990: 26).

Clearly though, economic recovery in this nexus was in evidencefro m the mid-15th cen tury. Palat and W allerstein are willing tospeak only of an "evolving Indian ocean wo rld ec ono m y." By1500, this economy combined a set of intersecting trade andproduction linkages converging on such nodes as Aden and Mocha

on the Red Sea: Basra, Go mb roon and H orm uz on the PersianGulf; Surat and Calicut on the western seaboard of the subconti-nent; Pulicat and Hughli on the Coromandl and Bengal coasts;Melaka on the Malay archipelago; and the imperial capitals such asDelhi and Teheran, connected by caravan trails.

Palat and Wallerstein acknowledge that these centers centralizedand dominated trans-regional trade and that they "lived at the same

pace as the outside world, keeping up with the trades and rhythmsof the globe" (Palat and Wallerstein 1990: 30-31, also Braudel1982: 18). Indeed , so po w erful was the produ ction superiority ofthe Coromandel and Gujarat textile industry that it led to the "de-industrialization" of other areas , and only the Navigation Laws ofthe mercantilist European nations, including Britain, kept Indiantextiles out of the West African and Caribbean markets (Palat and

Wallerstein 1990: 33: 49).Nevertheless, Palat and Wallerstein insist that three autonomoushistorical systems existed: the Indian Ocean w orld -eco nom y, thatcentered around China, and the Mediterranean/European zones,which merely converged at intersections. Yet they note the "swiftcollapse of these cities once their fulcral positions were under-mined. But they would have it that "their riches accumulated from

their intermed iary role in the trade between different world-systemsrather than acknowledging the existence of a single world econo m y.Furthermore, Palat and Wallerstein conclude that "despite thetemporal contemporaneity of post-1400 expansion of networks ofexchange and intensification of relational dependencies in Europeand in the world of the Indian Ocean, the processes of large-scalesocio-historical transformation in the two historical systems werefundam entally dissim ilar. In one zone , it let to the em ergen ce of




the capitalist w orld-e con om y. In the oth er, to an expa nded petty

commodity production that did not lead to a real subsumption oflabo ur" (Palat and W allerstein 1990 : 40 ). This is an excessivelynearsighted view.

THE MO DERN WO RLD SYSTEM PERIOD SINCE 1492 A. D.1492 and the Question of World System Break or Continuity in the1450-1600 AS' Phase

Adam Smith and Karl Marx both thought that the "discovery ofAmerica, and that of the passage to the East Indies by the Cape ofGood Hope, are the two greatest events recorded in the history ofm ankind" (Smith 1937). Latin Am ericanists and Latin Am ericanstend to ag ree . 1492 also plays a m ajo r role in the birth of the"modern world-system" as seen by Immanuel Wallerstein (1974)and previously by the present author who incorporated that date inthe title World Accumulation 1492-1789 (Frank 1978a).

More recently, Abu-Lughod (1989) argues in her path-breakingbook Before European Hegemony, that there was a 13th cen turyworld system, but that it was a different one than that which"began" in the 16th cen tury. Fo r he r, between the 14th centurydecline of the world system based in the East and the 15th-16thcentury rise of the world system centered in the West, thereoccurred a "declining efficacy " and " ^ o rg a n iz at io n " of "the waysin which they w ere form erly con nec ted." I view these changesrather as a "reorg anization" and conseq uently as a shift of thehegemonical center of gravity in the system from East to West - butnot a complete failure of the system as a whole, as she suggests.On the contrary, this temporary disorganization and renewedreorganization can and should be read as the continuation andevolution of the system as a whole.

Therefore, I even more decidedly agree that "of crucial importantis the fact that the fall of the east precedes the rise of the west," asJanet Ab u-Lu gho d (19 89: 338) insists. Tha t is, the wo rld systemiceconomic and hegemonic crisis of the mid-14th century gaveEurope the change to ascent in the hierarchy expansion andhegemonic reorganization during and following the crisis.




Th e co nt ex t . . . undeniab ly a l te red . . . The wo r ld-sys tem . . . a ren a d id mo veoutward to the Atlant ic and the Atlant ic r im nat ions of Portugal and Spain,be for e sh i f ting to nor th we s te rn Eu rop e . Th e fac t i s tha t the ax is o f C ent ra lAs ia -Anato l ia -nor thern Ind ia and the Levant -Egypt — an ax is of cen tralimportance in ear l ier t imes which was scarcely destroyed by the 17thcen tury — nev er again occup ied the center s tage of the wo rld system "(Abu-Lughod 1990: 12) .

A similar argument was already made by Marshall Hodgson in

the 1950s and by Jacques Gernet in the 1970s:

The economic weakness of the pivotal Middle East by the end of theMiddle Ages, for ins tance, seems to have been a decis ive factor in theeconomic and pol i t ical disposi t ion of the world into which Europe wasabout to expand (Hodgson 1954: 718) .

What we have acquired the habi t of regarding - according to the his tory ofthe world that is in fact no more than the history of the West - as thebeginning of modern t imes was on ly the repercuss ion of the upsurge of theurban , mercant i le c iv i l i za t ions whose rea lm ex tended , before the Mongolinvas ion , f rom the M edi te r ra nea n to the Sea of Ch ina . Th e W est ga theredup par t of this legacy and received form i t the leaven which was to makeposs ib le i ts ow n dev e lop m ent . Th e t ransmiss ion w as favored by thecrusades of the 12th and 13th centur ies and the expansion of the Mongol

empire in the 13th and 14th centur ies . . . There is nothing surpr is ing aboutthis W este rn ba ck w ard ne ss: the I ta l ian c i t ies . . . we re at the term inu s ofthe grea t commerc ia l rou tes of As ia . . . The upsurges of the West , whichwas only to emerge from i ts re la t ive isolat ion thanks to i ts mari t imeexpansion, occurred at a t ime when the two great c ivi l izat ions of Asia[China and Is lam] were threatened (Gernet 1982: 347) [or iginal ed. 1972]) .

In general, the Mongol conquests and the economic crisis alsolaid the basis for wide ranging economic reorientation and politicalreorganization in the following period of economic expansionduring the "long 16th centu ry" from 1450 to 1 6 0 0 + . In direct orindirect response to the changes wrought by the previous economiccrisis and the Mongol invasions, the Ming Dynasty rose in China,Akbar's empire rose in India, the Safavid Empire rose in Persia,and Europeans began a worldwide imperial and now also trans-Atlantic ven ture in the W est. It is the latter to which the then



1 8 C O M P A R A T I V E C I V I L IZ AT I O N S R E V I E W

Eurocentric historiography has devoted most absolute and relative

attention: perh aps too m uch . Fo r as observ ed in the introduc tion,until at least the 19th century, the prep ond eranc e even of heg em oni-cal transformation still did not lie exclusively in the West.

The Ottoman Empire still lay, and indeed expanded, across theEast-West trade routes. H ow eve r, its ultimate historical fate wasinfluenced if not sealed by the developments in world systemhistory as a who le: The initial Ottom an political exp ans ion

occurred during a period of world economic decline in the 14thcentury. Com petition with the rising W est stopped Ottomanexpansion in that direction, overland against the Hapsburgs underSuleiman outside of Vienna in 1521, and by sea against the Italiansat Lepanto in 1571 under Selim II. The more successful Ottomanexpansion in the 16th century was in the southeasterly direction andwestward along the northern coast of Africa, which were them-selves politically weakened and rendered economically lessprofitab le by "the decline of the Ea st." M ore ov er, the same declineof the Central Asian nexus limited Ottoman opportunities in thatdirection. Fina lly, the M ogu l advance throu gh the relatively stillmore attractive India under Babur and his grandson Akbar perhapspreempted the Ottomans in that direction.

Another limitation on Ottoman power and expansion, of course,was the neighboring Safavid Empire in Iran/Persia. The Safavidsbuilt an empire in the 16th century on the ruins left by the Mongolinvasion and retreat. U nd er the Safav ids, dom estic and internation-al commerce was perhaps more favored than anywhere else in thewo rld at the time . Th e Safavids sought to maintain and fu rth ertheir political economic interests against their Ottoman andPortugu ese com petitors. Especially un der Ab bas I who ruled fr o m1587 to 1629, they therefore sought and maintained shiftingalliances with the Fren ch , Hap sbu rgs and British . It was in alliancewith the latter that the Persians ousted the Portuguese from Hormuzin 1622. Th e Portug uese had used their fortres s on this strategical-ly located island in the Straits of the same name to exact tribute ofprotection mo ney fr om tra ffic across the Arabian Sea to and fr o mIndia and Asia.

However,




The Por tuguese co lon ia l reg ime, bu i l t upon war, coerc ion , and v io lence ,d id no t a t any po in t s ign i fy a s tage of ' h ig he r de ve lop m en t ' eco nom ica l lyfor As ian t rade . Th e t rad i tiona l co m m erc ia l s t ruc ture cont inued to ex is t ,howeve r much damaged by r e l i g ious war s b reak ing ou t be tween Mos lemsand Chr i s t i ans . Tr ad e d id no t un de rgo any increase in quant ity w or th y ofme nt ion in the per iod . The co m m erc ia l and eco nom ic form s of thePor tuguese co lon ia l reg ime were the same as those of As ian t rade andAsian au thor i ty . . . Th e Por tug uese co lon ia l reg im e, then , d id no t in t rod ucea s ing le new e lem ent in to the co m m er ce of sou thern As ia" (van Le ur 1955:

117-8).

Indeed,

The d es t ruc t ive e ffe c t s o f the d i sco very of the sea rou te to As ia up on thetradi t ional in tercont inental t rade routes was not fe l t unt i l af ter the e lapse ofan en t i re ce ntu ry. A fte r a se t -back a t the be gin nin g of the 16th ce ntu ry thet rade rou tes th rough , the Middle Eas t rega ined the i r fo rmer impor tance ,and at the end of the 16th century the t ranscont inental caravan t radereached d imens ions which mus t p resumably be regarded as i t s h i s to r ica lculminat ion (Steensgaard 1972: 9) .

Around 1600 all the silk moved overland by caravan; and thetonnage of spices brought to Europe by ship around the Cape wasonly half of those brought overland by caravan (Steensgaard 1972:

56-5 7). M ore ov er, the m aritime trade still remained predom inantlyin South and West Asian [Middle Eastern] hands.

Thus, the collapse of the Mongol imperium disrupted the landroutes through Central Asia and the disinterest of Ming Chinaadversely affec ted overland trade, particularly in silk. H ow eve r,the most marked decline did not occur until the 17th centurydepression . The route via the steppe to the Baltic was also

disrupted . How ever in the 18th century trade revived along them ore northerly route through Siberia. T rad e also declined via theGulf port of Orm uz to the Black Sea. The trade corrid or via theRed Sea and Alexandria remained open.

Per contra other students of the world system therefore, if otherparts of the world hav e been the most im portant players in the sameworld system earlier on, some of these players still were important

in the same world system afte r 1492 as we ll. Th erefo re, it is



2 0 C O M PA R A T I V E C I V I LI Z AT IO N S R E V I E W

necessary to rephrase [or repose?] the question of "incorporation"

into the system as perceived by Wallerstein and others, e.g., in the1987 issue of his Review dedicated to "Incorporation into theW orld-Econo my: How the W orld-System Exp ands." M oreove r, thehegemony first of Iberia as well as the relative monopolies of tradeon which they were based, came at the expense of still operativetrading powers among the Ottomans and Indians, among others.Even the English mercantilist Sir Josiah Child still observed in 1680

that "we obstruct their [Mogul Indian] trade with all the Easternnations which is ten times as much as ours and all European nationsput together" (cited in Palat and Wallerstein 1990: 26).

Thus, the world and its economic and political relations were stillm ultipolar well into the 17th cen tury. Beyond the intra-Eu ropea nrivalry for hegemony, there were still competing powers in Europeand western and southern Asia among the Hapsburgs, Ottomans,Safavids, and M ogu ls. Th e latter three w ere all M uslim. How ev-er, they were nonetheless as rival among each other as they werewith the Christian Europeans who were also rival both among eachother and with these Asian powers.

Beyond the retreat into greater isolation of China under the Mingat one end of Eurasia, another major reason that this historicaldevelopment eventually became a more uni-polar rather than amulti-polar transition is explained by J. M. Blaut (1977) withreference to the other end: Th e W estern European m aritimepowers' conquered the Americans and injected its bullion into theirow n processe s of capital accum ulation. T he W estern pow ers thenused the same to gain increasing control over the trade nexus of thestill attractive and profitable Indian Ocean and Asia as a whole.

The argument that after 1492 European development [of capital-ism] benefitted from capital accumulation based on its exploitationof the Americas has been made before, among others by Smith,M arx and Ke ynes . Tw enty years ago I also ma de this argum entform a world [capitalist] system perspective, later published underthe title World Accum ulation 1492-1789:

In summary then, we may say that the s ixteenth century witnessed the f i rs tlong , sus ta ined , and widespread quant i t a t ive and qua l i t a t ive deve lopment

of capi ta l ism in i ts mercant i le s tage and the f i rs t per iod of concentra ted




capi ta l accu m ula t ion in Eu rop e . . . T he sam e proc ess ex tended fa r beyond

Europe to those reg ions or "enc laves" which were in tegra ted in to theprocess o f wor ld cap i ta l accumula t ion a t th i s s tage , espec ia l ly the NewW orld sources o f go ld and s i lver. D ur in g th i s s ix teen th-cen tury secu la rand cyc l ica l upsw ing , We s te rn Eu rop e exper ien ced a sharp acce le ra t ion ofthe process o f cap i ta l accumula t ion . . .

Th e ind igenous popu la t ion of the New W or ld s uffe red ye t m or e f ro m thecont r ibu t ion to the process o f p r imi t ive cap i ta l accumula t ion dur ing the

s ix teen th cen tury . . . T he prec iou s me ta l s f ro m the N ew W or ld enabledWestern European countr ies to se t t le di rect ly or indirect ly the def ic i t in thetrade balance with the Orient (Frank 1978a: 52-53, 63)

Blaut (1992) now returns to his thesis and attempts to quantifysome of the surplus contributed to accumulation in Europe by[forced] labor in the New W orld . Th e stock of silver tippled andthe circulation of silver coins increased eight to ten times in the16th century along. Blaut argues that this monetary flow into andthrough Europe is "routinely underestimated" in amount andsignifican ce. In world systemic term s, the captu re of this surplusenhanced [West] European ability to compete with East Europeansand A sians — and then to out-comp ete them — in the wo rldeconom y. M y above cited book and its comp anion volum eDependent Accumulation and Underdevelopment (from 1978b) wereattempts to analyze this same world system development and itsuneven cyclical process in its unequal center-periphery structure.However, then I still mistakenly thought that it all started in 1492,and that is why I put that date in my title.

Europe then used their power to thwart industrial and commercialcom petition, particularly in India. Th e subsequen t destruc tion ofthe Indian textile industry m ust stand out as a particularly imp ortantaspect of what Blaut is saying.

Economic Cycles, Hegemonial Shifts and the Marginality of LatinAmerica since 1450/1492

Apart from the reservations expressed above, I provisionallyaccept the main outlines of Wallerstein's and others' rendition ofcycles and hegemonical shifts in the world system for the period




since 1492: Econo m ic expansion durin g the "long 16th century "

fro m 1450 to 1600 + , the "17th century crisis," renewed econom icexpansion during the 18th century "commercial revolution," and theconventional dating of the econo m ic ups and dow ns of the + / -50 year "long" Kondratieff cycles since the end of the 18th century.[Frank (1978 written in 1970-73) and more recently Goldstein(1988) also sought to trace these backwards into the 16th century].I also continue provisionally to accept the "associated" political

cycles of hegemonical transition and shifts in the now Europeancentered world system from Iberia in the 16th, to the Netherlandsin the 17th, Britain [twice] in the 18th and 19th, and the UnitedStates in the 20th centuries.

These cycles and hegemonical shifts have been widely analyzedelsewhere by Wallerstein (1974, 1984), Modelski (1987), Modelskiand Thompson (1988), Thompson (1989), Goldstein (1988), Chase-

Dun n (198 9), and Fran k (1978a, b) . Fo r present purp oses there-fo re, it should suff ice to sum m arize their impact on Latin A m ericaand its position in the world system.

Let us return to developments in the western Mediterranean andAtlantic, which were reviewed above the discussion of the 1050-1250 "A" phase and the 1250-145 0 "B" phase . In 1469, themarriage of the Castillan Isabella the Catholic and Ferdinand ofAragon united their two lands and gave further impetus to theChristian Reconquest of Spain fro m the M uslim "M oors." "Almostevery European monarch ... dreamed of finding a western passage"(Parry 1963: 174), and Isabella's Finance Minister accepted anof fe r to try by the Geno vese naviga tor Co lum bus . He also raisedprivate finance capital in Barcelona and elsewhere but, after havingbeen rejected by the Portuguese, worked in the service of theSpanish Queen, for whom he sought a better and cheaper way to theriches of the Orient.

The fact that the conquest of Granada takes place the same year as thed iscovery of A me r ica (1492) i s no t acc id en ta l . Th e two des t in ies we reuni ted . . . T he un ion of Ara gon and Ca s t i l l a , the conques t o f G ran ad a , theexpu ls ion of the Jew s, T he Inquis i t ion . . . and the forced chr is t ia nizat io n ofthe Musl ims, events that are centered on the famous date 1492, seem not

to ha ve any re la t ion to the pro ble m of gold . In fac t , they ha ve a very c lose




re la t ion . . . To say that Columbus was looking for a route to the China of

the Great Khan and not gold or spices is to forget that he was looking forboth things a t a t ime, jus t l ike the Portuguese when they rounded Afr ica . . .To say that the thirs t for gold was preponderant and obsessive, isun qu es t io na ble . . . On d iscov er ing the i s lands , the f i r s t th ing he [Co lum bus]asked was, is there gold? (Vilar 1969: 59-66) .

The "long sixteenth century" economic and westward expansionfro m 1450 to 1600 incorporated the "W estern hem isphe re," "New

World" into a millennial Afro-Eurasian world economy and system.The extraction of gold and silver from the Americas benefittedsome Europeans enormously both at home and in competition withothers in Asia abroad . Th e im m ediate cost to the inhabitants of theAm ericas is well know n: W ithin half a century, com plete geno cidein the Antilles; in one century in Mexico, the reduction of theindigenous population from 25 million to 1.5 million; in the New

World as a whole the extermination of perhaps 95 percent of theoriginal population, previously unheard of ecological imperialism(Crosby 1986) leading to valiant but doomed ecological movementsof resistance, and of cou rse de-cu lturation. As the patron of fr eetrade, Adam Smith, observed, "to the natives, however both of theEast and the West Indies, all the commercial benefits which canhave resulted from those events have been sunk and lost in the

dreadful misfortunes which they have occasioned" (Smith 1937).Thus, the inhabitants of the New World contributed to capitalaccumulation and economic growth elsewhere, but they scarcelydrew any benefit from it.

The 17th century crisis offered Latin American as well as Asiasome relief . It included the revival of regional and inter-region altrade in their own hands, while in Europe and the world Mediterra-

nean hegemony declined from Portugal to the Ottomans, to bereplace by the Dutch and later by the British.

In the general expansion of the 18th century "commercial revolu-tion," hegemony in the world system passed to Britain and worldtrade shifted westward across the Atlantic. Th e "triangulartrade[s]" among Western Europe, Africa, the Caribbean and NorthAm erican increasingly replace "Oriental" trans- or circum - E urasian

trade. In the Am ericas, the impo rtant participants we re the slave



2 4 C O M PA R AT I V E C I V IL I Z AT IO N S R E V I E W

plantations in the Caribbean and southern colonies and the merchant

colonists in the no rthern colonies of N orth Am erica. LatinAmerican was largely marginal and marginalized, except for theexport of gold from Brazil at the beginning and the export of silverfrom Mexico at the end of the century.

The cyclical ups and downs of the 19th century turned on a WestEuropean axis, which increasingly extended into North America.Their colonial exploitation of India contributed significantly to

Britannia's ability to rule the waves and maintain Pax Britannia.Britain's decline and the challenge of the United States andGermany, and of Russia and Japan behind them, started in theKondratieff "Great Crisis" of 1873-96.

Latin Americans had some participation in world economic andpolitical events, but not m uch . The exp ort of raw m aterialsincreased, especially during the classical imperialist last quarter of

the 19th century; and Latin American infrastructure, finance,politics, society and much of its culture and ideology was shapedaccordingly to support various regions' and countries' participationin this international division of lab or. Parts of the Ca ribbean andshoreline regions exported sugar and other tropical products,produ ced in part by labo r now imported fr o m Asia. Brazil exp ortedsugar and increasingly coffee. Mexico and Peru resumed their rolesas mining econo mies and w ere joine d by Chile. Arge ntina seemedto prosper exporting wheat and meat, attracted European immi-grants, draw n by real w age rates highe r than those in Eu rop e. LikeAfrica and Asia and especially India which supported Britain, LatinAmerica for a long time generated a significant surplus of merchan-dise exports over imports, which supported the capital accumulationof Western Europe and its financial investments in the overseassettler regions of North American and Australia to which Europealso sent its surplus labo r as em igrants (Fran k 1 978b ). Perha ps inpart thanks to this contribution to capital accumulation and invest-ment elsewhere, by the turn of the 19th-20th century the now so-called "third world" accounted for some 20 percent, and LatinAm erican in turn V2 thereo f or som e 10 pe rce nt, o f total w orldtrade.




THIRD WORLD AND LATIN AMERICAN SHARES INW O R L D T R A D E / E X P O RT S

Third W orld Latin Am erica LA/TW

Y B L U RA Y B L U RA1850 20 10 5/101880 241900 21 16 201913 22 19 20 8 7 10 5/101928 30 23 25 25 10 9 10 10 4/101938 33 25 25 25 25 10 7 9 7 10 4/101948 30 30 30 11 10 3/101960 21 20 7 7 3/101970 18 20 4 4 2/101980 28* 30* 4 4 1/10 +1990 20 20 3 3 1/10 +

Sources and Explanat ions :

Perce ntage s ar e for share s of exp orts , exc ept for t rad e in 1850. Sh ares ofImports or total (export + import) t rade vary one or two points , but these arerounded out anyway.1850 Est imate by AGF from James Foreman-Peck (1938: 2) c i t ing M. G.Mulhal l Dictionary of Statistics London: Rout ledge 1899Y = P. Lam art ine Yates (1959: 32) avera ges 1876-80 & 1896-1900B = Paul Bairoch (1975: 93) and for Latin America calculated by AGF frompp. 97 and 93

L = Le ag ue of Nation s (1942 : 18)U = United Na tions (19 65: 13) and (1990 : 99 5). T he latest data is for 198 8.RA = Roun ded Ave rage of these per cen tage shares by A G F.* = Except ional ly h igh Third W orld s hare due to tem pora ry increase in theprice of oil in 1973 and 1979.+ = m ore than 1/10 but not m or e than 1.5/1 0L A /T W = the [decl in ing] propor t ion of Lat in Am erica in Third W orld expor ts /t rade . Fo r present purp oses , no effor t has been ma de to correc t for theprevious and now again renewed "third world" status of much of the temporary"second world ."



2 6 COM PARAT IVE CIVILIZATIONS REVIEW

The 20th Century Marginalization of Latin America

However, with growing industrialization in the North, thecontribution of the South, including Latin America, became lessnecessary or usef ul. Fo r during this century and especially in itssecond half, Latin America in particular and to some extend thethird world have been increasingly marginalized from the worldeconom y and much of wo rld politics. Th e United States, Japan andRussia rose to pose economic and political challenges, but none ofthem had ever been part of the third wo rld . In the next worldeconom ic crisis from 1913 to 1 940 /45, two world wars w ere foughtlargely in Europe to settle the matter of hegemonic succession, andonly a relatively minor part of the Second World War was foughtover the challenge of Japan in the Pacific and in China.

M any parts of the third w orld are being m arginalized. Th e mostvisible marginalization is that of Africa, whose natural and humanresources were squeezed dry like a lemon, which was then discard-ed. H ow ever, perhaps the mo st dram atic recent increase inmarginalization - or an accelerating process of Africanization - isthat of Latin A m erica . The relatively if absolutely greatestpauperization is that of its once richest and m ost prom ising coun try,Argentina.

The participation and shares in world trade [see table] remainedat roughly 20 percent for the third world and 10 percent, or 5/10of that, fo r Latin Am erica during the century 1850-19 50. D uring1913-1940/45 Kondratieff "B" phase world economic crisis and thetwo world wars however, the third world share rose from 20 to 30percent; and the Latin American share remained stable at 10percen t. Th is mad e the Latin Am erican share decline fr om 5/1 0 to3/1 0 of the third wo rld share. Then in the postw ar world ec onom ic

recovery and even more so in the renewed Kondratieff B phasecrisis since the mid-1960s, the third world share returned to itsprevio us 20 percent of wo rld trade. By then how eve r, m uch of thisthird w orld share was due to the exp ort of petro leum . Fo r 1980,the increase in the price of oil in 1973 and again in 1979 temporari-ly raised the third world share to 30 percent of world exports.Fifteen percent, or half of these, were oil exports from OPEC

countries, which did not include Mexico (calculated from United




Nations 1990: 995). By 1990, the renew ed decline in the price of

oil had returned the third world share to 20 percent of worldexports. Am ong these, 8 percent of total w orld expo rts, or 4/1 0 ofall third world exports, was accounted for by manufacturingexporter from the four East Asian "Newly Industrializing Coun-tries" [NICs} South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore,who have a combined population of less than 50 million (GATT1990: 13).

In the meantime, especially during the readjustments generatedby the current world economic crisis, Latin America wasmarginalized out of world trade flow s. All of Latin Am erican andthe Caribbean, with a population of some 450 million, saw theirshare of world exports reduced to 4 percent in 1970 and 1980, andto 3 percent in 1990 (see table ). Tha t is less than H olland, w ith 15million inhabitants and few raw materials. Th ree percent of theLatin A merican total, o r almost 1 of these 3 percentag e po ints, inturn was from oil exports (calculated from CEPAL 1990: 29 and31). Fo r the last two dates , the Latin Am erican share even in thirdworld exports has fallen to little more than 1/ 10th. The once proudArgentina's exports have declined to only 1/10 again of that, or 0.3percent - that is 1/300th - of the world total (calculated fromCE PA L 1990: 31 and United Na tions 1990: 99 5). In 1928,Argentina alone still accounted for 3 percent or l/30th of world

exports (calculated fo rm League of Nations 1942: 139 and 18).That is a mark of the marginalization of Latin America.

The Dilemma of Latin Am erica in the Contemporary World System

In Latin America, the 1980s were termed "the lost decade" ofdevelopment largely because, instead of continuing to grow, per

capita GNP and income receded to the levels of the mid-1970s [andin A frica to that of the pre-independence level of the early 1960s].Per capita income declines of 10 to 15 percent were common andreached or exceeded 25 percent in Argentina and Peru.Immiserization became rampant in part because of the debt serviceand massive export of capital to help support the banks, thefinancial system, and the economy generally in the North [or more

precisely in the West, since the East did and suffered the same]




during the present world Kondratieff economic crisis, which began

in the mid-1960s (Frank 1980, 1988). In Latin America, but also insome other parts of the Third World, the 1990s threaten to becomethe "decade of cholera."

However in historical terms, for Latin America - Eastern Europeand the [ex] Soviet Union as well - the 1980s was a lost decade inother, perhaps even mo re im portan t, ways as w ell. They seem tohave lost the train or missed the boat of economic competitiveness

in the international division of labo r. Som e sectors, regions o rcountries in North America, Western Europe and East Asia investedto upgrade their technology and strengthen their competitiveness onthe wo rld mark et. At the sam e tim e, all of Latin A m erica, EasternEurope, Africa and much of the rest of Asia disinvested instead.Not only did they fail to upgrade technologically, they even had tosacrifice much of their previously existing production infrastructureand human capital, which were becoming increasingly non-competi-tive.

Therefore, the long term cost of servicing the debt abroad maybe even greater than the short term one of reducing consumption athom e; for it also prevented investment in the fu tu re. Th e ideologi-cal claims about privatization or export-led growth are largelyirrelevant to these real world facts: All of these countries practicedexport-led [non] grow th. M oreo ver, [often under IM F/W orld Bankpressure] they socialized the burden of the debt, which has beenlargely contracted an d/o r taken advantage of privately . Quiteindependently of ideology or anything else, the "Communist"regimes in the East and the "military fascist" ones in the South, aswell as their respective successor "democratic" regimes in bothhave all handled their debt crises in exactly the same way (Frank1990d, 1992). At the sam e time , the debt was and remains an

instrument successfully used by the West to force the South and theEast to drop out of the race to compete in the world economy.

While parts of Eastern Europe may now be reincorporated or atleast re-associated to a European economic community, parts ofLatin America face the same future in an American Initiative toform a Co m m on M arket fro m Alaska to Tierra del Fueg o. TheUnited States, of course, takes this initiative in its own business

interest to promote competitiveness against Europe and Japan.




Where useful, Canadian and Latin American raw materials, labor

and capital are to fue l the decelerating U.S. locom otive. M ore ov er,this American jigsaw puzzle is already being assembled piecemeal.First there is the U.S.-Canada free trade agreement; then the U.S.-Mexico one and, finally, the trilateral NAFTA agreement involvingthe same coun tries. Serving as a link in the meantime, M exicomakes a trade agreement with the Central American states, a looserone with Venezuela and Columbia, and still another one with moredistant Chile. In the Southern cone, Mercosur establishes tiesamong Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay . Ho we ver, theseeconomies, and those of Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia are not likelyto find much place in an economic bloc dominated by the UnitedStates. Either they pose too much of a com petitive threa t, like SaoPaulo, or they have little to contribute beyond drugs.

Reference to the presently ongoing regionalization of the worldeconomy and/or the emergence of regional political economic blocscentered on the United States, a German centered Europe, and aJapanese centered Asia has become commonplace, and waspreviewed in Frank (1986 and 1988a, b). How ever, there wo uld bea diffe rence between participating in an Am erican regional b locfrom being associated to the European Economic Community or tothe new Japan ese "greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sph ere." Th eother third world economies [including those temporarily in the"second world"] are being associated with rising central economiesand perhaps even with a newly emerging hegemon in old Eurasia.However, as the world center of gravity continues its millennialmove westward around the northern hemisphere of the globe, theLatin Americans on the other hand are invited to share the declininghegemony on board the sinking U.S. economic ship.

Nonetheless, the Latin Am ericans have little other cho ice. Either .

they sink alone in the competitive storm of the world economy, orthey salvage what they still can in association with the UnitedStates. An independent Latin American econom ic association iseven more of a chimera now than it was in the 1960s [LAFTA], the1970s [Andean and other Pacts], and the 1980s [SELA].

Moreover, the more some of Latin American and other parts ofthe third world - and indeed in the first world industrial countries

themselves - are integrated into or associated with regional



3 0 C O M PA R AT I V E C I V I L IZ AT I O N S R E V I E W

economic and political formations or blocs, the more a growing

number of their population will be effectively and increasinglym arginalized. They will form an ever grow ing underclass of peoplewho are sacrificed on the altar of "development" and who fall bythe wayside in the drive to maintain competitiveness, both withinthe econom ic bloc and am ong them in the w orld econo m y. LatinAmerican association in a weaker economic region can only exposeits peo ple to greater sac rifices. It is one thing now to recognize that

there is no escape from the world system /econom y/m arket. I usedto recommend de-linking from it and Samir Amin (1989) still does.I no longer do (Frank 1991c). H ow ever , it is quite another thingto claim that "export-led gro w th," "m arketization ," "privatization,"etc. can and will expedite all into som e sort of parad ise. [Old fre emarketeers have claimed such against all prevailing evidence.]Some old critics thereof - West, East, and South - now have turnedinto new enthusiasts for "the m agic of the m ark et." U nfo rtuna tely,it would be magic indeed if the market now suddenly were tohomogenize peoples and regions after centuries - no millennia - ofpolarizing them instead.

In other words and ironically, a dual economy and society maynow indeed be in the process of formation at this stage of socialevolution in the w orld system . H ow eve r, this new dualism isdifferent from the old dualism I rejected in my earlier writings(Fran k 1967 and other s). Th e similarity between the two"dualisms" is only appa rent. Acco rding to the old dualism , sectorsor regions w ere supposedly separate. Th at is, they supposedlyexisted without past or present exploitation between them before"m odernization: united them happily ever aft er . M ore ov er, thisseparate dual existence was seen within cou ntrie s. [I correctlydenied all these prop ositions.] In the new dua lism, the separationcomes after contact and ofte n af ter exploitation. Th e lem on isdiscarded after squeezing it dr y. Th us, this new dualism is theresult of the process of social and technological evolution, whichothers call "deve lopm ent." M ore ov er, this new dualism is betweenthose who do and those who cannot participate in the worldwidedivision of labor. To som e extent, the ins and outs of this worlddivision of labor are in part divided by the requirements and

opportunities of technological "progress" (Frank 1991a).




What is a realistic prospect, therefore, is the growing threat to

coun tries, regions and peoples to be margina lized. That is, theymay be involuntarily de-linked from the world process of evolutionor developm ent. H ow ever, they are then de-linked on term s, whichare not of their own choosing . Th e most obvious case in point ismuch of sub-Saharan A frica . Th ere is a decreasing world ma rketin the international division of labor for Africa's natural and humanresources. Having been squeezed dry like a lemon in the course ofworld capitalist "development," much of Africa may now beabandoned to its fate . How ever, the same fate increasingly alsothreatens other regions and peoples elsew here. M oreo ver, they maybe foun d everyw here: In the South (e. g., B angladesh, the BrazilianNortheast, Central America, etc.); in the ex-industrial rustbelt, theSouth Bronx, and other regions and peoples in the West; and inwhole interior regions and peoples in the "socialist" East, e.g., onboth sides of the Sino-(ex)Soviet bo rde r. Even ts in the fo rm er"socialist second world" East must accelerate and aggravate themarginalization of millions of people in Eastern Europe and the(ex)Soviet U nion. As noted above, many regions there are m orelikely to Latinamericanized, and some even Africanized andLebanonized, instead of achieving the West Europeanization towhich they aspire.

In Latin American, the best most people could hope for formtheir powerful northern overlord would be political benign neglect.Unfortunately, that has not been the recent experience in whatPresident Reagan called his "front [not back] yard" in CentralAmerica and the Caribbean, parts of which were invaded both byhim and his successor President Bush. M oreo ver, there andelsewhere bitter experience from M exico to Argentina dem onstratesthat, however desirable national and local electoral politicaldemocracy may be, it offers the people scarcely any power tomanage their economic and therefore social existence or todetermine their futu re (Frank 1992). Th e best, or perhaps only ,political options open to their peoples is to mobilize the socialmovement to defend their economic livelihood and culturalautonomy as best they can (Fuentes and Frank 1989). A LutaContinual

—University of Amsterdam



3 2 C O M PA R AT I V E C I V I L IZ AT I O N S R E V I E W

Epilogue

The first part of this article on world-wide cycles overlaps withtwo othe rs. Gills and Fran k (1992b) discuss the Eu rope an dim en-sion in "World System Economic Cycles, Crises, and HegemonicalShifts 1700 B. C. to 1700 A . D ." A fter the presentation of thelatter article at professional meetings and already before itspublications, its cycle datings have been put to empirical test by twoauthors wo rking independently of each othe r. Also independ ently,a third author recently also referred to long cycles in this period.Since their work has implications for the cycle dating proposedabov e, I of fe r a very brief summ ary of these three au tho rs' w ork inrelation to the present one.1. Dav id W ilkinson of the Political Science De partm ent of U CL Apresented a paper at the 32nd Annual ISA Convention April 1-4,1992 in Atlanta entitled "Decline Phases in Civilizations, Regionsand Oikum ene" specifically to " of fe r an independent emp iricalcheck for the Gills and Frank prop osa l." W ilkinson tested thedatings of our A and especially B phases by calculating increasesand declines in city populations [above certain thresholds] previous-ly tabulated by Tetius Chandler in his Four Thousand Years ofUrban Growth: An Historical Census (Lew iston/Qu eenston: St.D av id's University Press 1987). W ilkinson sifted throug h an

enormous number of Chandler's "snapshots" of city sizes taken forconve nience o r other reasons at time that ofte n did not coincidewith our suggested inflec tion/turn ing points of A and B pha ses, andWilkinson concludes:

Th e dec l ine data w er e consis tent wi th t reat ing phas es B l , B 2, B6, B7 , B 8[numbered consecut ive ly beg inn ing wi th the f i r s t 1700-1500/1400 B phase

in our l i s t ] as Old Oikumene dec l ine phases , were ambiguous wi th respec tto B4 and B5, and did not ref le ct B3 . O n the other han d there w asmisf i t t ing decl ine data for A2, A7, and A8, and potent ia l misf i ts inam big uo us data aff ec t ing A6 and A 5; A 4 could not be tes ted and A3 wa snot ch al le ng ed. Th ese resul ts w er e favo rab le to the prop osi t io n that theOld Oikumene showed A-B phases a t leas t as ear ly as the mid-2ndmi l lennium B. C . ; bu t cons iderab le re f ine m ent o f phase t ime-b ound ar ies ,and data col lect ion for crucia l but unmeasured years , i s cal led for (p . 30) .




Of course, Chandler's city size data and Wilkinson's use of them

are not beyond challenge or dispute, which could further support,m odify , and detract fro m our dating of phases and the g eographicalregions or civilizational units to wh ich they apply . M ore ov er, thefits are better for W est A sia, fr om w hich we took most of our cues ,than East Asia, which was less or later integrated into the "system"— but fo r which the data may also be less reliable. Significantlyhowever, there was no fit at all between changes in city sizes also

tabulated by Chandler for the Western Hemisphere and the phasesw e identified in the Eastern H em isphere. This transatlantic m isfitoffers a significant corroboration of our Eurasian wide system andcyc les. It suggests that, as fa r as it goes in Eu rasia , the fit is notspurious; since it disappears entirely if we try to extend it beyondthe "system" across the Atlantic before 1492.2. At the same ISA meeting, G eorg e Mode lski of the PoliticalScience Department of the University of Washington in Seattleinformed us that his graduate student at the same, AndrewBosworth, working independently of Wilkinson, tested and largelyconfirmed our long cycle phase . His subsequently received pap er,"W orld Cities and W orld System s: A Test of A . G . Fran k and B.Gills' 'A' and 'B' Cycles," was presented at the Canadian Associa-tion of Geographers Conference, Vancouver, May 21, 1992.Bosworth concludes that "1) there is significant support inChandler's data for the existence of long-waves of economicexpansion and contraction, each averaging about 250-years inlength. Such regularity fu rth er reinfo rces Fran k and G ills'contention that these phases condition one another, generating acyclic alternation. 2) C ha nd ler's data lends strong support to Fran kand Gills' timing of the following phases: B l; A2; B2; A 3; B4;A5; A6; B8. 3) C ha nd ler's data is inconclusive or lends mildsupport to ... A and B phases 3000 -2000 B .C .; B4; B5. 4)Chandler's data is inconsistent with the locations of timing of B3;A4; B6; A7; B7; A8; for which Bosworth suggests some minor andmore greater adjustments."3. Klavs Randsborg published The First Millennium A. D. inEurope and the Mediterranean. An Archaeological Essay, (Cam-bridge: Cam bridge University Pre ss, 1991). Randsborg reportsand summarizes archaeological evidence on dating of climatic cycles




and ups and downs in rural settlement, towns and other centers,

produ ction and excha nge, and society, culture and m entality. M anyof his dating periods for the western end and sometimes more ofour "world system" often confirm -or offer evidence to permitrefinements of - our A and B phases. M ore ove r, Rand sborg notesthat "today we realize that at any rate the Western Empire [ofTome] showed signs of weakening long before the rise of Islam andthat the Carolingian realm was hardly totally isolated" [p. 167],

After noting that there have been some 500 theories devoted to thecollapse of the Roman Empire, Randsborg writes that "the wellknown 'third-century crisis' . . . was accompanied and probablycaused by a dramatic shift in the economic center of gravity ... [to]the Levant [which] did not suf fe r overall decline" or had been th eeconom ic center all along [pp. 169 -70]. Ran dsborg noted that, bycontrast to the 500 theories about its collapse, "considerably fe w er"have been devoted to the expansion of the Roman Empire; and heconcludes that "to fully understand the emergences of the RomanEmpire would require study of the center-periphery relations inEurope and the Mediterranean area that emerged with the Mediter-ranean civilizations" [p. 185],

The tests by Wilkinson and Bosworth based on city-size data andthe archaeological review of Randsborg suggest some possibleadjustments to the datings of cycle phases in medieval times aspresented abov e: Th e 75 0/8 00 A. D . is not well reflected by thedata, and the beginning of the expansion phase data from 1000/10 50should perhaps be postponed to around 1100 A. D.

The study, of which this article on Latin America's place in theselong cycles and hegemonic shifts is but a part, offers a worldsystemic approach to the study of this as well as other historical andcontem porary prob lem s. I am gratified to learn of the twoelaborate attempts by Wilkinson and Bosworth to put our "theory"to empirical tests with independently gathered data within a year ofits public presentation and even before its publication, which Itherefore hope may promote more of "all of the above."

Other recent studies that indicate the existence of such longcycles includes: "From Luxuries to Com m odities: Th e Na ture ofMediterranean Age of Trading Systems," by the archaeologists

Andrew and Susan Sherratt of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford




University. Their paper was presented in a con feren ce at Oxfo rd

in December 1989 and published in its proceedings, Bronze AgeTrade in the Mediterranean, edited by N . H . Gale (Jonsered: PaulAstroms Forlag , 1991). Un der the subtitle "A Historical Picture"[pp. 367-375] the Sherratt, of course entirely independent from usand without our prior knowledge, distinguished the same BronzeAge periods.

Kristian Kristiansen's "The Emergence of the European World

System in the Bronze Age. Divergen ce, conve rgence and socialevolution during the first and second millennium B. C. in Europe,"to appear in Europe in the First Millennium B. C., edited by JorgenJenson and Kristian Kristiansen (Department of Archaeology,University of Sheffield, forthcoming), which he kindly gave toFrank. Also forthcoming is Kristian Kristiansen 's book EuropeBefore History. The European World System in the Second andFirst Millennium B. C.

Philip Kohl has kindly made available to Frank the unpublishedtranslation of E. N. Chernykh's Ancient Metallurgy in the U SSR:The Early Metal Age, (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming),in which the Russian scholar says that "peoples of the EMA [EarlyMetal Age] cultural zone seem to have shared the same develop-mental cycle : the form ation and decline of cultures at variouslevels generally coincided ... Such explosions follow some regularrhythm in accordance with [which] various provinces at the sametime collapse or em erge." M oreov er, Chernyk h supplies datingsfor some of these cycles, which also lend further support to thework reported here and elsewhere as mentioned above.

I am now drawing on the above cited and other recently availablesources to refine the identification, and where necessary/possiblerevise the dating, of these cycles in the pre-Christian iron and

bronze ages and to pursue them further back through the 3rdmillennium B. C. for much of A fro-E uras ia. This new essay isentitled "Bronze Age World System Cycles" (Frank, 1993).



3 6 C O M PA R A T I V E C I V I L I Z AT I O N S R E V I E W

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Documents

[1993] André Gunder Frank. Latin America at the Margin of World System History (In: Comparative Civilizations Review n° 28, Spring, pp. 1-40)