ABSTRACT
The globalized world system in which we live today-the first and only that is truly global in an absolute sense from a world historical perspective-is a complex spatiotemporal interaction network that began in multiple and politically special regions of the earth, at different times in history, under diverse cultural and environmental conditions, and has since been collapsing into a single highly interconnected structure with increasingly dense interaction networks. This is diametrically opposed to the long-term evolution of the physical universe, which presumably began in one place, at one time, and has since been expanding with overall decreasing density-the so-called Big Bang model. This chapter examines the process of globalization in world system history as a complex and punctuated process of long-term collapse resulting in the modern global world system with unprecedented and increasing network density. The analysis upon which this Big Collapse model is based draws on new data from the Long-Range Analysis of War (LORANOW) Project and related computational methods.
