ABSTRACT

World-system theorists maintain that the underlying structure of the system has remained essentially the same throughout its five-hundred-year history. The combined wealth, technological expertise, and military power of the core continue to exceed those of the rest of the world. The core is still the location of the most technologically advanced, capital-intensive, high-wage production. The relative power of the European core states has shifted. Great Britain, the dominant power of the nineteenth century, has just barely been able to retain its status as a major core power. It has been weakened by industrial decline, exhausted by two world wars, and stripped of its colonial empire. The post-1945 period was also one of those rare times when peace and stability characterized intercore relations. The core states also continued to be the location of the most advanced forms of industrial production, the highest per capita income, and the greatest increases in per capita wealth in the world.