ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that concern over the disjunction between economic and political trends is misplaced. It also argues that the geographical boundaries of economic regions are in the process of shifting at an ever more rapid pace, and that the disparity between economic and political trends, far from being a troublesome anomaly, represents instead the likely future of the world-economy. The geographer Donald Meinig has pointed out how the settlement of North America and the development of the United States involved a continual process of regional creation and agglomeration. In the sixteenth century, however, the regional role of Japan in this world-economy began to dwindle. By the middle of the seventeenth century, Bengal silk was being sold by the Dutch in Japan and Javanese sugar by the English in Persia. As there is nothing new about globalization, so too there is nothing new about multilateralism.
