Before European Hegemony: The World System AD 1250-1350 by Janet L. Abu-Lughod (Visiting Professor of Sociology and Historical Studies, New School for Social Research Professor of Sociology and Urban Studies, Visiting Professor of Sociology and Historical Studies, New School for Social Research Professor of Sociology and Urban Studies, Northwestern University)
In this important study, Janet Abu-Lughod presents a groundbreaking reinterpretation of global economic evolution and provides a new paradigm for understanding the evolution of world systems by tracing the rise of a system that, at its peak in the opening decades of the fourteenth century, involved a vast region stretching between northwest Europe and China. Writing in a clear and lively style, Abu-Lughod explores the reasons for the eventual decay of this system and the rise of European hegemony. She concludes with a provocative analysis of our current world economy, suggesting that we may be moving towards a pluralistic world similar in important respects to that of the thirteenth century.