A John Hope Franklin Center Book.

The historic long term economic interconnections of the world are now universally accepted. The idea of the economic 'world system' advanced by Immanuel Wallerstein has set the period of linkage in the early modern period but Andre Gunder Frank and Barry K. Gills think that this date is much too late. They argue an interconnection going back as much as 5000 years. In The World System, leading academics examine this issue, in a debate contributed to by William H. McNeill and Immanuel Wallerstein among others.

"The Modern World System", Immanuel Wallerstein's influential multivolume reinterpretation of global history, traces the emergence and development of the modern world from the sixteenth century to the twentieth. -- From publisher's description.

Methodology -- Cultural Analysis -- Summary and Conclusion -- 8 An Assessment of World-System Theory -- Strengths -- Weaknesses -- Other Directions in the Study of Global Change -- Summary and Conclusion -- Notes -- Bibliography -- About the Book and Author -- Index

World System History is a component of Encyclopedia of Social Sciences and Humanities in the global Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), which is an integrated compendium of twenty one Encyclopedias. The Theme on World System History presents the study of the history of the world system. World system history offers an array of tools with which to apprehend the future. This volume discuss the essential aspects such as World-Systems Analysis; Big History; Epistemology of World System History: Long-Term Processes and Cycles; One World System or Many: The Continuity Thesis in World System History; World Population History; States Systems and Universal Empires; The Silk Road: Afro-Eurasian Connectivity Across the Ages; Dark Ages in World System History; The Kondratieff Waves as Global Social Processes; Globalization in Historical Perspective; Emergence of a Global Polity; World Urbanization: The Role of Settlement Systems in Human Social Evolution; Democratization: The World-Wide Spread Of Democracy in The Modern Age; The Rise of Global Public Opinion; East Asia In the World System; Incorporating North America into the Eurasian World-System. This volume is aimed at the following five major target audiences: University and College Students Educators, Professional Practitioners, Research Personnel and Policy Analysts, Managers, and Decision Makers, NGOs and GOs.

Cohen argues that the emergence of the United States as the world's sole superpower and the process of globalization have failed to remove the importance of geography as a political and strategic factor of great import. After laying out the structural basis for his theory of geopolitical theory, he launches into an examination of how geopolitical realities have developed since World War II, a period that witnessed greater change than the preceding two and a half centuries. He then turns his attention to the meat of the book, separate examinations of the each of the major world regions, including examinations of the important countries and their individual geopolitical realities.

Leading cultural theorists consider the meaning and implications of world-scale humanist scholarship by engaging with Immanuel Wallersteins world-systems analysis.