Years of Poems and Spirits

In the second half of his book, Wallerstein pushed further his concept of World System. In discussing the path of many European countries took that eventually converged into the system, he extended his analysis beyond capital and labor, to include geological, religious and political determinants.

In the case of English ascendancy to the core, Wallerstein eluded to a British sub-system, which consisted of England, Ireland and Wales . The union of the three accelerated the division of labor. For example, by 1614, Ireland was reduced to an economic colony of England, a supplier of wool for an expanding English clothing industry (p228). Similarly, the land enclosure in Wales accelerated. As a result, a greater number of peasants were forced off their land and became available laborers in the cities or mercenaries for the state machine (p250).

In addition, the “capitalization” of England (or the subsystem centered in London) was not an exclusively urban or manufacturing affair. Market-driven agricultural production was the other side of coin. Wallerstein repeatedly drew the distinction between rural labor relations of the earlier Feudalistic continent and that of the 16th century England. Whereas medieval husbandmen slaved for their lords in exchange for protection (p90), English farmers were free laborers and had unprecedented social mobility (p236). When commenting on the definition of “Gentry”, Wallerstein promulgated his interpretation that they were “capitalist landowners” (p240). They were so defined because their economic outlook was aligned to that of the world system: they operated by capital means and produced for the market. In the case of the Polish aristocracy (i.e. land owners) squeezing out local merchants in grain trade (p247, p305), Wallerstein seemed to suggest that, when there was a conflict of their commercial identity with the national one, the loyalty was with the world system. Wallerstein’s narration certainly helped me to overcome a misconception that the capitalism started hand in hand with mechanical industrialization.

Although Wallerstein summarized that “state structures are relatively strong in the core areas and relatively weak in the periphery” (p355), his study of the relationship between the state machine and the configuration of world economy, is at its best in the study of the semi-periphery regions, such as France and Russia. According to Wallerstein, the reign of Ivan the Terrible was a critical period of Russian history. Thanks to Ivan’s “single-minded” drive to secure state authority, Russia was able to join the world system later as a semi-peripheral state, not a peripheral one such as Poland (p315). In France, Wallerstein described the existence of a “centrifugal force” within its border before and during the Wars of Religion. Although such forces eventually succumbed to a determined French state, the very model of “absolute monarchy”, the cost of homogenization was that “France never had the degree of development like England” had (p287).

It is interesting that Wallerstein claimed there was only “one class” at the genesis of modern world system (p356). He asserted that it was the awareness of their common economic orientation that told the nascent bourgeoisies apart from other actors in the society. From his analysis, one might say that a state’s response to the challenges of a new world was often reflected in the complicated relationship between the “traditionalists” (Wallerstein’s way to group together the aristocracy represented by the monarch himself) and the bourgeoisie. There were always enormous tensions between the two as each benefited from very different means of production. On the other hand, there was a symbiotic dependency. The state could provide much needed security, protection (especially trade protection), and production coordination that was desperately needed by the capitalists. The bourgeoisies, in turn, could provide much desired cash to fund the expansion of the state machine. In Russia, for example, the interests of the old and the new were much aligned as the state expanded territories and corralled laborers for capital, as well as tax base, growth. But the tensions were greater in both France and England. The different outcome of the two states, according to Wallerstein, was partly because the French state was able to co-opt the bourgeoisies through both violent and non-violent means. Relative to the French and to its own merchant class, the English Crown was weaker, thus had to accommodate, and later yield, to the demand of the bourgeoisies.

Overall, I can see how Wallerstein’s concept of modern world system threads up the materials in the book. His emphasis on the foundation of such a system: capital expansion and labor division, is well placed. At a personal level, I was never satisfied at various theories explaining the decline of the Spanish empire or the rise of the British. By introducing the two dimensions and their relationship to the modern capitalism, Wallerstein certainly gives me a new perspective to look at history.

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