ABSTRACT
Immanuel Wallerstein's general economic analysis of the century and a half that concerns him and the use of the core-periphery paradigm are a good deal less than satisfactory. His exposition consists of a review of various theoretical perspectives on the period 1600-1750, ending with his own judgment that it was a period of consolidation rather than decline. In Wallerstein view, capitalism emerged as the solution to problems feudalism could no longer manage from the mid-fourteenth century on; and from 1450 to about 1600 the European economy enjoyed a phase of expansion parallel to that which preceded the crisis of the fourteenth century, more resilient and diversified structure stretching beyond Europe. In elaborating the dynamics of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Wallerstein uses the concept of core states arid peripheral areas, a contruct which emerges strongly at the close of his first volume. He also defines an intermediate category of "semi-peripheral" states.
