Immanuel Wallerstein’s highly influential, multi-volume opus, The Modern World-System, is one of this century’s greatest works of social science. An innovative, panoramic reinterpretation of global history, it traces the emergence and development of the modern world from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. This new volume encompasses the nineteenth century from the revolutionary era of 1789 to the First World War. In this crucial period, three great ideologies–conservatism, liberalism, and radicalism–emerged in response to the worldwide cultural transformation that came about when the French Revolution legitimized the sovereignty of the people. Wallerstein tells how capitalists, and Great Britain, brought relative order to the world and how liberalism triumphed as the dominant ideology.
List of Illustrations
Preface: On Writing about the Modern World-System
1. Centrist Liberalism as Ideology
2. Constructing the Liberal State, 1815–1830
3. The Liberal State and Class Conflict, 1830–1875
4. The Citizen in a Liberal State
5. Liberalism as Social Science
6. The Argument Restated
Bibliography
Index
“Wallerstein offers a timely topic that answers our dilemmas about modern society and the historical sense of the Western civilization.” ― Theory & Society
“In this new volume [Wallerstein] answers critics who complain that he pays little attention to culture. . . . Definitely worth reading.” ― Choice
“A fresh look at global history in this volume of his Modern World-System series, tracing the evolution of contemporary political ideologies from the 18th to the 20th centuries.” ― Columbia College Today
“Provocative. . . . Radically original.” ― New Left Review
