The Incorporation of Vast New Zones Into the World Economy

• Incorporation of new zones that were in the external arena

• The pace of incorporation accelerated

• This incorporation derived from the need of the world economy to expand its boundaries

• Production processes change + respond to the market

• Incorporation vs. peripheralization

• Changes:

  • Nature of the trade

  • Port of trade

  • Strength of the state machinery in the external arena

  • Long-term imbalance of trade

• Production process changes:

  • New pattern of exports/imports

  • Larger economic enterprises

  • Increase in the coercion of the labour force

• Cash-crop agriculture + reduction/elimination of local manufacturing activities

• More exports than imports

• Raw materials products: indigo, silk, opium, cotton

• Slaves as exports declined and were replaced by raw materials exports → agricultural products

• Pattern of exports from West Africa to Europe

• Emergence of a multitiered structure of traders

• Coercion of labour

• Outward ripple of expansion: as a given zone is incorporated into the world economy, this leads to an adjacent further zone being pulled into the external arena

• External arena: zone from which capitalist world economy wanted goods but which was resistant to importing manufactured goods in return and strong enough politically to maintain its preferences

• Incorporation into the world economy: insertion of the political structures into the interstate system

• Ideal situation: state structures that are neither too strong nor too weak

• As a zone was incorporated, its trade moved from being at great risk to something promoted and protected by the interstate system

• The outcomes at the end of incorporation turned out to be less different than the starting points

• There are not multiple capitalist states but one capitalist world system and to be part of it, one has minimally to be integrated into its production networks or commodity chains, and be located in states that participate in the interstate system which forms the political superstructure of this capitalist world economy.

• Incorporation is the period of integration