The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power and the Origins of Our Time

432 Pages·2009·2.37 MB·English

by  Giovanni Arrighi

Th e Long Twentieth Century

Th e Long Twentieth Century
Money, Power, and the Origins
of Our Times
GIOVANNI ARRIGHI
First published by Verso 1994
Th is edition published by Verso 2010
© Giovanni Arrighi 1994, 2010
New material © Giovanni Arrighi 2010
All rights reserved
Verso
UK: 6 Meard Street, London W1F 0EG
USA: 20 Jay Street, New York, NY 11201
Verso is the imprint of New Left Books
ISBN-13: 978-1-84467-304-9
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
Typeset by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh
Printed in the USA by Maple Vail
Contents
List of Figures vii
Preface and Acknowledgements xi
Introduction 1
1 the three hegemonies of historical capitalism 28
Hegemony, Capitalism, and Territorialism 28
Th e Origins of the Modern Interstate System 37
British Hegemony and Free-Trade Imperialism 48
US Hegemony and the Rise of the Free Enterprise System 59
Towards a New Research Agenda 75
2 the rise of capital 86
Th e Antecedents of Systemic Cycles of Accumulation 86
Th e Genesis of High Finance 97
Th e First (Genoese) Systemic Cycle of Accumulation 111
Th e Second (Dutch) Systemic Cycle of Accumulation 130
Th e Dialectic of State and Capital 148
3 industry, empire, and the “endless” accumulation
of capital 163
Th e Th ird (British) Systemic Cycle of Accumulation 163
Th e Dialectic of Capitalism and Territorialism 179
Th e Dialectic of Capitalism and Territorialism (Continued) 200
Reprise and Preview 219
v
vi the long twentieth century
4 the long twentieth century 247
Th e Dialectic of Market and Plan 247
Th e Fourth (US) Systemic Cycle of Accumulation 277
Th e Dynamics of Global Crisis 309
epilogue: can capitalism survive success? 336
postscript to the second edition 371
References 387
Index 405
List of Figures
1.1 Mensch’s Metamorphosis Model 10
2.1 Total Silver Coinage in England, 1273–1470 101
2.2 Trends in the Cloth Trade: Shipments from England and
Production at Ypres 101
2.3 Mediterranean Routes of Genoa and Venice in the
Middle ages 121
2.4 Th e Genoese Space-of-Flows, Late Sixteenth and
Early Seventeenth Centuries 136
2.5 Volume of Grain Shipments through the Sound, 1562–1780 136
3.1 British Capital Exports, 1820–1915 167
3.2 Th e Sixteenth-century Trade Expansion 175
3.3 Th e Nineteenth-century Trade Expansion 175
3.4 Long Centuries and Systemic Cycles of Accumulation 220
3.5 Ideotypical Trajectory of Mercantile Expansions 232
3.6 Hick’s Model of Mercantile Expansions 232
3.7 Bifurcation in the Trajectory of Mercantile Expansions 235
3.8 Model of Local Turbulence 242
3.9 Model of Systemic Turbulence 242
3.10 Metamorphosis Model of Systemic Cycles of Accumulation 242
4.1 US Trade Balance and Current Account, 1896–1956 280
4.2 US Gold Reserves and Short-term Liabilities, 1950–72 311
4.3 Outfl ow of Foreign Direct Investments of Developed
Market Economy Countries Distributed by Geographical
Regions of Origin, 1950–83 313
4.4 Long-term Interest Rates in the United States, 1965–84 327
E.1 Th e Rise of East Asia in Comparative Perspective 344
E.2 Income Gaps versus Industrialization Gaps 347
E.3 Rate of Increase of Accumulated Japanese Direct Foreign
Investment 361
E.4 Th e East Asian Space-of-Flows, Late Twentieth Century 361
P.1 Evolutionary Patterns of World Capitalism 375
vii

To my graduate students
at SUNY-Binghamton, 1979–94