Before European Hegemony

Download or read book Before European Hegemony written by Janet L. Abu-Lughod and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this award-winning study, Abu-Lughod argues that the modern world economy had its roots not in the sixteenth century, as is widely supposed, but in the thirteenth century economy--a system far different from the European world system which emerged from it. Using the city as the working unit of analysis, the author provides a new paradigm for understanding the evolution of world economies by tracing the rise of a system that, at its peak in the opening decades of the 14th century, involved a vast region stretching between northwest Europe and China. Abu-Lughod also explores the reasons for the eventual decay of this system and the rise of European hegemony.