World Economic History Congress: Arrighi in Beijing. A roundtable on Giovanni Arrighi's 'Adam Smith in Beijing. Lineages of the twenty-first century

August 4, 2009 9:00 AM - 12:30 PM

Maskeradezaal (Academy Hall), Utrecht, Netherlands
In 2007 Giovanni Arrighi published his long expected analysis of shifting global powers in the twenty-first century. In his The Long Twentieth Century. Money, Power, and the Origins of Our Times (1994) Arrighi presented a powerful account of the alternating hegemonic cycles within the expanding capitalist world economy since the 13th century. Adam Smith in Beijing completes the story, describing and explaining the fast retreat of the 20th century hegemonic power, the US, and the formation of an 'East-Asian-centred world-market'. As the book argues, 'in the 21st century China may well become again the kind of non-capitalist market economy that Smith described, under totally different domestic and world-historical conditions.' Four eminent specialists and leading global historians, P. O'Brien, K. Sugihara, K. Pomeranz and P. Vries, will comment and debate Arrighi's analysis and provocative points of view.

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