Capitalisme et Modernité chez I. Wallerstein

Immanuel Wallerstein (1930-2019) has rewritten the history of capitalism on a global scale in a Braudelian vein, reconceptualising it in an original way. By making the creation of a transnational commercial space by European states in the long 16th century the condition for the emergence of capitalism as a social system, he makes imperialism and colonialism the driving force behind accumulation, while at the same time drawing up a genealogy of development and underdevelopment over the long term. This elaboration of capitalism also functions as a critical operator of modernity, anticipating both decolonial studies and those of the capitalocene. Finally, by highlighting the cycles of this system (alternating periods of free trade under the hegemony of one power and competitive protectionism), he makes the most burning geopolitical issues intelligible (the return of protectionism, rivalry between China and the United States for access to hegemony, the decline of the West and the emergence of a multipolar world).