economies were generally larger than the political entities that were con-
tained within them.
Not everyone has joined the world systems bandwagon. Wallerstein him-
self continued to deny that his model could be projected back in time,
maintaining that there is a fundamental difference between the modern
capitalist world system and all preceding systems. Thus the controversy over
world systems became an extension of the older Substantivism–Formalism
debate, with Wallerstein joining the followers of Polanyi in insisting that
modern capitalism is distinct from all earlier systems and their adversaries
seeing continuity from ancient (or even prehistoric) to modern times. Those
critical of extending the theory backwards point to the level of technology
and the transportation and communication systems as being too under-
developed to allow for any real economic unity across large geographical
areas for any significant length of time. What, they ask, qualifies a com-
mercial network in the Bronze Age, for example, as being a“world system”
in any meaningful way rather than seeing it as nothing more than a series of
interconnected local trading systems? They wonder aloud why the word
“world”is used. The terminology ends up being grander than the historical
phenomenon it describes. World systems theorists respond by claiming that
a world system when applied to premodern history doesn’t have to span the
globe, nor does it require direct contact among all its participants. Instead it
refers to a trading network extending beyond a physically delimited zone
that is so integrated through exchange and trade that it forms a single
commercial whole. Thus there can be simultaneous regional world systems,
each in a sense comprising its own“world.”Some casual observers see the
whole matter as degenerating into a question of semantics.
For historians who see the development of world systems as extending
back into the ancient world, the land of Mesopotamia and the larger region
of Southwest Asia play a crucial role. Mesopotamia served as the oldest core,
to be followed in time by Egypt, India, and China. Eventually world systems
grew together while simultaneously expanding outward, encompassing new
peripheries. Westward this process extended to the Mediterranean basin and
later Europe; southward it traveled up the Nile into the African interior and
down the Red Sea and Persian Gulf into the Indian ocean and across to
Southeast Asia; northward and eastward it moved into Central Asia and
beyond to Siberia and Mongolia. Dating this process becomes a matter of
determining when separate systems were integrated enough to become a
single system. Thefinal product was an interacting Afro–Eurasian exchange
zone from Atlantic to Pacific held together by interconnecting sinews of land
and sea routes through which increasing quantities of raw materials,finished
products, luxury items, and in some places basic consumer goodsflowed.
So what can we learn from such controversies? First, as is typical of theo-
retical disputes in history and anthropology, both sides are right, and both
sides are wrong. Carefully devised abstractions can obscure reality as easily as
6 Some introductory musings