premodern trade. Markets in which prices were set by supply and demand
and evidence of private capital accumulation, investment, and risk-taking
appear between the late-fourth and mid-third millenniumBCE.So do indi-
cations that merchants were motivated by the desire to make a profit. And to
confuse matters, private and state capital were often found within the same
economy.
The second controversy involving long-distance trade centers on the ideas
of Immanuel Wallerstein and is known as World Systems Theory. World
systems were trading networks that spanned separate communities meshing
them economically into a single whole. The driving force of such a system
was the accumulation of capital, which was market-oriented, profit-induced,
and structured to transfer surpluses unequally through the core–periphery
concept. World markets create interregional and international divisions of
labor in which the peripheral areas supply the core area with resources, in
particular raw materials, which are undervalued, in return for manufactured
goods, which are overvalued, ensuring the accumulation of capital at the core
at the expense of the periphery. Thus cores exploit peripheries, rich states
exploit poor states, and technologically advanced societies exploit technolo-
gically underdeveloped societies. The net beneficiaries are the ruling or elite
classes of the cores, although they make sure the elite classes of the periph-
eries also benefit, guaranteeing their support in perpetuating the system.
Wallerstein believed that such a world system emerged in the sixteenth
century CE and is a unique characteristic of modern capitalism. Others,
however, have decided to use his model for understanding trade in much
earlier periods. For them, modern capitalism is nothing more than the most
recent incarnation of a system that extends in various manifestations far back
in time. They see core–periphery structures as inherently unstable: cores
could grow, shrink, and disintegrate. If a core grew enough, its periphery
could become part of the core. New peripheries could be added to a core,
and established peripheries could drop out. Peripheries in time could develop
their own peripheries. If a system shifted enough, a periphery could become
a core, often as the result of technology transfer, and a core could likewise
become a periphery. Skeptics of a strict interpretation of world systems
theory see the various permutations going farther. In some places, they
maintain, cores and peripheries didn’t exist, and in other places there was a
multitude of cores. Nor did the component parts always function according
to the model. For example, cores didn’t always dominate their peripheries,
peripheries were not always dependent on their cores, andfinished products
sometimesflowed from peripheries to core rather than vice versa.
Cores, peripheries, and the systems they were embedded in did not have to
be synonymous with political entities. Cores and peripheries could exist
together in the same state as, for example, in the Roman or Chinese empires,
or a core could constitute a region of independent states as in ancient Sumer
or Greece that exploited an area not under its direct political control. World
Some introductory musings 5