Political-Economic Reconfigurations in Global Power Systems: From the 18th Century up Until Today
IN THE ANCIENT WORLD, IONIANS BELIEVED that the entire world consisted of the Mediterranean and its hinterland, while for Chinese living around the Yellow River the world was oceans at one end and great deserts on the other. Both cultures built their commercial, political and social networks according their worldview, with their respective founders using the boundaries of their world networks to conceive of a global world (Landes, 1998).