ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT This essay combines new evidence from world history with postcolonial and
materialist theory to develop an interdisciplinary model of dialectics in world politics. The
argument is both theoretical and historical. Focused on the global field of empires jockeying
in every period, whose material productions accrue over successive periods, the essay models
an inter-imperial theory of political economy and culture (IIPEC), with attention to anti-
imperial as well as imperial actors. The theory introduces three dialectical concepts (co-
formation, co-production, and accretion), which explain the linked emergence of states,
capitalist economies, material infrastructures, and cultural institutions. Applied to new
historical data on states outside of Europe, including in ‘medieval’ periods, the IIPEC
analysis reveals that these processes of linked emergence predate-and prepare-the rise of
European nation-states. The IIPEC model thus reframes the Westphalian account of state
formation within a transhemispheric dialectics, and in turn it revises Eurocentric narratives
of modernity and globalization.
