ABSTRACT
World-systems analysis recognised a unique and unitary 'world', the world — the whole — that constitutes its unit of analysis. The first logistic corresponds to the period of long-term inflation and deflation running generally from the middle of the 15th century through to the first third of the 18th century. The set of intellectual and institutional structures of knowledge defining the geoculture of the modern world-system has been periodically reconstituted through a discrete series of medium-term fluctuations. The second logistic runs from the mid-18th century through to the latter part of the 19th century. The third logistic runs from the late 19th century and does not seem to be completely exhausted. The international perspective nurtured by English radicals included support for the North in the American Civil War and secret involvements with revolutionaries on the continent to support Polish independence and Italian nationalism.
