Ages of Reorganization 1

Dark ages is a familiar, if undertheorized, term of world history. In this chapter, I propose to generalize that concept and to reinterpret it as “ages of reorganization.” I do this by viewing the two major periods of past “dark ages” as phases in the millennial thrust toward the formation of a world community, being one of a cascade of processes that make up world-system evolution (Devezas & Modelski 2003).