In short, world history is a history of world systems, and the two basic pillars of world systems are accumulation and hegemony-rivalry. Our world system happens to be going through restructuring and transformation. In fact, all world systems are always in a state of evolution and change. They are never static. Also, the world system went from non-western to western not because there was something inherently special or superior about the West. As Janet Abu Lughod argued: “Europe pulled ahead because the ‘Orient’ was temporarily in disarray.”
In a sense, the tables have now turned. The “Orient” is going through centralization as evinced by the Sino-Russian alliance, whereas the West is in disarray. Moreover, the latest world system never had a global scope. There were always “subsystems” within the overall system. And to borrow from Abu Lughod: “Their interactions with one another, although hardly as intense as today, defined the contours of the larger system.”
In other words, no single power was ever hegemonic, and in turn “the participation of all was required for its perpetuation.” Also, the decline and fragmentation of a world system means that the likely result or outcome of this decline and fragmentation is that the subsystems will all be “cumulatively shifting in the same direction.” But given that none of the subsystems are independent of one another, all the subsystems will be affected when the overall world system goes through decline and fragmentation as is the case today.
An important point to note is that Europe never created or invented a world system. Europe simply inherited the previous world system from Muslims. To borrow from Abu Lughod: “Europe did not need to invent the system, since the basic groundwork was already in place by the thirteenth century when Europe was still only a peripheral and recent participant. In this sense, the rise of the west was facilitated by the preexisting world economy that it restructured.” Europe simply changed the rules of the previous world system invented by the Muslims, in the sense that the rules of the world system went from being based on trade to being based on plunder. There is also a difference between “restructuring” of the world system on one hand and “substitution” on the other hand. Europeans simply restructured what they inherited from the Islamic empire. They did not substitute the system with another one. To borrow from Abu Lughod yet again:
“If we assume that restructuring, rather than substitution, is what happens when world systems succeed one another, albeit after intervening periods of disorganization, then failure cannot refer to the parts themselves but only to the declining efficacy and functioning of the ways in which they were formerly connected. In saying that the thirteenth-century world system failed, we mean that the system itself devolved. Its devolution was both caused by and a sign of the ‘decline’ in its constituent parts, with multiple feedback loops.”
It follows that “the cliché ‘rise and fall,’ which has been indiscriminately applied to nations, empires, civilizations, and now world systems, is too imprecise.” Abu Lughod then went on to define “rise and fall” of empires when she stated:
“In the course of history, some nations, or at least groups within them, have gained relative power vis-à-vis others and have occasionally succeeded in setting the terms of their interactions with subordinates, whether by means of direct rule (empires), indirect supervision (what we today term neocolonialism), or through unequal influence on the internal policies of others (hegemony). When this happens, it is called a ‘rise.’ Conversely, the loss of an advantageous position is referred to as a ‘decline,’ even if there is no real deterioration in absolute level of life.”
But apparently, empires do not rise and fall in the same way that world systems rise and fall. As Abu Lughod wrote: “World systems do not rise and fall in the same way that nations, empires, or civilizations do. Rather, they rise when integration increases and they decline when connections along older pathways decay.” As a result of the decline of the world system, peripheral regions of the world system become more powerful, and the core region becomes weaker. Such is the case or situation today.
Adam A. Azim 