4
Cores, Peripheries, and Civilizations
David Wilkinson
The
terminology of "core" and "periphery"
allows
us to address substantive issues of
interest
to the study of world politics, of
world
systems, and of civilizations: issues
of
geographic differentiation, inequality, and
uneven
change. Power, pelf, prestige, prog-
ress,
population and piety are significantly
centric:
spatially located, concentrated,
radiating
outwards, radially diminishing. To
some
degree, but not completely, their spatial
distributions
overlap, creating the sense of
historic
"cores" for macrosocieties; at some
timescales,
cores seem stable, at some longer
scales
they move in apparently nonrandom ways.
Reprise.
This is one in a series of papers
exploring
the relationship of civilizations
theory
to world politics. In this series
(e.g.,
Wilkinson, 1987) I have defined "a
civilization"
using criteria of level-and-
politicomilitary-connectedness
rather than
the
more customary criteria of level-and-
cultural-uniformity. Screening a list of some
seventy
candidates yielded a list of fourteen
entities
which appeared to be societies at a
civilized
level (criteria: cities, record-
keeping,
economic surplus, non-producing
classes,
etc.) which were also connected
world-systems
-- militarily closed, geotechno-
logically
isolated social-transactional net-
works
with an autonomous political history
during
which they did not take or need not
have
taken much account of the possibility of
conquest,
invasion, attack -- or alliance and
cooperation
-- from any outsiders, although
the
members of each such system did recurrent-
ly
conquer, invade, attack, ally with, com-
mand,
rule, legislate, cooperate with, and
conflict
significantly and effectively with
(and
only with) one another.
Table 1 gives the resulting roster of
civilizations/world
systems.
Table
1. A Roster of Fourteen Civilizations
(listed
in their approximate order of incorporation into Central Civiliza-
tion)
CivilizationDuration Terminus
1. Mesopotamian before 3000 B.C. - c. 1500 B.C.Coupled with
Egyptian
to form
Central
2. Egyptianbefore 3100 B.C. - c. 1500
B.C.Coupled with
Mesopotamian
to form
Central
3. Aegeanc. 2700 B.C. - c. 560 B.C.Engulfed by
Central
4. Indic
c. 2300 B.C. - after c. A.D. 1000Engulfed
by
Central
5. Irish
c. A.D. 450 - c. 1050 Engulfed
by
Central
6. Mexicanbefore 1100 B.C. - c. A.D.
1520Engulfed by Central
7. Peruvianbefore c. 200 B.C. - c. A.D.
1530Engulfed by Central
8. Chibchan? - c. A.D. 1530 Engulfed by Central
9. Indonesianbefore A.D. 700 - c. 1700Engulfed
by Central
10.
West Africanc. A.D. 350 - c. 1590
Engulfed
by
Central
11.
Mississippianc. A.D. 700 - c. 1700
Destroyed
(Pestilence?)
12. Far
Easternbefore 1500 B.C. - after c. A.D. 1850Engulfed by Central
13.
Japanesec. A.D. 650 - after c. 1850Engulfed by Central
14.
Centralc. 1500 B.C. - present ?
Figure
1 is a chronogram showing the lifespans
and relative
(Mercator) locations of the
civilizations
in the roster.
The most striking effect of the new defini-
tion on
accustomed lists of civilizations is
that
such accustomed entities as Classical-
Hellenic/Greco-Roman
civilization, Hittite
civilization,
Arab-
ian/Magian/Syriac/Iranic/Islamic
civiliza-
tion(s),
Orthodox Christian civilization,
Russian
civilization, and even our own famil-
iar
Western civilization, must be reclassified
either
as episodes of or as regions within a
previously
unrecognized social-network entity,
by my
definition both a civilized society and
a world
system, hence a single civilization.
This
civilization I have labeled Central
civilization.
Central civilization was created in the
Middle
East during the 2nd millennium B.C. by
an
atypical encounter between two pre-existing
civilizations. Civilizations may coexist,
collide,
break apart or fuse; when they have
fused,
they have typically done so by an
asymmetric,
inegalitarian engulfment of one by
the
other. But the linking of the
previously
separate
Egyptian and Mesopotamian civiliza-
tions
through Syria was an atypical, relative-
ly symmetric and egalitarian
"coupling" which
created
a new joint network-entity rather than
annexing
one network as a part of the other
entrained
to its process time. The new Cen-
tral
network, in an unbroken existence and
process
since then, has been atypical in
another
way: it has expanded, slowly by the
reckoning
of national and state turnover
times,
but quite rapidly by comparison to
other
civilizations, and in that expansion has
engulfed
all the other civilizational networks
with
which it once coexisted and later collid-
ed. Now expanded to global scale, Central
civilization
constitutes the single contem-
porary
instance of the species "civilization."
Figure
1 shows "Greco-Roman" and "Western" as
epochs
of regional dominance within Central
civilization;
these dominant regions in fact
constituted
long-lived, but impermanent, cores
of
Central civilization. The Near Eastern,
Medieval
and global phases of Central civili-
zation
also possessed cores, but they were
larger
and less culturally homogeneous than
the
Greco-Roman and Western cores.
Civilizations considered in their political
aspect
(and as world systems, in their world-
political
aspect) ordinarily have one or the
other
of two political structures: the states
system
(= state system = multi-state system =
system
of many independent states) and the
universal
empire (= universal state = world
state =
one-state system). Figure 2 is the
chronogram
from Figure 1, complicated by
symbolization
of the states-system periods,
the
epochs of universal empire, and the cur-
rently
unclassifiable eras of each civiliza-
tion.
About
twenty-three universal empires and about
twenty-eight
states systems may be identified.
The
universal empires of the fourteen civili-
zations
are listed in Table 2 (see also Wilk-
inson,
1988), the states systems in Table 3.
Table
2. The World States of the Fourteen Civilizations
CivilizationState Span Duration
1. Mesopotamiana. Akkadianc. 2350 - c. 2230
B.C.120
b. Third Dynastyc. 2050 - c. 1960
B.C. 90
of Ur
c. Babylonianc. 1728 - c. 1686 B.C. 42
2. Egyptiana. Old Kingdomc. 2850 - c. 2180
B.C.670
b. Middle Kingdomc. 1991 - c. 1786
B.C.205
c. New Kingdomc. 1570 - c. 1525 B.C.
45
3. Aegeana. Minoan c. 1570 - c. 1425 B.C.145
4. Indic
a. Maurya c. 262 - c. 231
B.C.
31
5. Irish None?
6. Mexicana. Aztec c. A.D. 1496 - 1519
23
7. Peruviana. Inca c. 1470 - 1533 63
8. Chibchan
None?
9. Indonesiana. Srivijayac. A.D. 695 - late 13th
C.600
b. MadjapahitA.D. 1293 - 1389 96
10.
West Africana. Ghana c. A.D.
950
?
b. Mali c. A.D. 1330 ?
c. Songhai c. A.D. 1500 ?
11.
Mississippian None?
12. Far
Easterna. Ch'in-Han221 B.C. - A.D. 184405
b. Sui-TangA.D. 589 - 750161
c. Mongol-Ming-A.D. 1279 - 1850571
Manchu
13.
Japanesea. Taiho A.D. 702 - 1336634
b. Hideyoshi-A.D. 1590 - 1868 278
Tokugawa
14.
Central
Near Easterna. Neo-Assyrian663 - 652 B.C.
11
Phase
b. Persian-525 - 316 B.C.209
Macedonian
Greco-Romanc. Roman 20 B.C. - A.D. 235
255
Phase
Table
3. The States Systems of the Fourteen Civilizations
CivilizationStates
SystemsNotable StatesDuration
1. MesopotamianA. Pre-SargonidUruk, Kish,
Nippur, Ur,
Lagash, ?
to c. 2350 B.C. Umma, Elam, Mari, Agade
B. Pre-Urnammu Agade, Guti, Erech,
Ur, Lagash,
180
c. 2230 - c. 2050 B.C. Uruk, Elam, Assyria
Table
3. Continued
CivilizationStates
SystemsNotable StatesDuration
1. MesopotamianC. Pre-Hammurabic Ur, Uruk, Isin,
Elam,
Lagash, 232
(continued) c. 1960 - c. 1728 B.C.
Eshnunna, Larsa,
Babylon,
Mari, Kassites,
Assyria
D. Post-HammurabicBabylon, Sea
Lands, Kassites,
___
c. 1686 - c. 1500 B.C. Hittites
(becomes 14A)
2. EgyptianA. Pre-NarmerUpper Egypt, Lower
Egypt ?
to c. 2850 B.C.
B. First IntermediateHeracleopolis,
Thebes 189
c. 2180 - c. 1991 B.C.
C. Second IntermediateThebes, Xois,
Avaris
216
c. 1786 - c. 1570 B.C.
3. Aegean(A. Pre- Thalassocracy(Knossos,
Phaistos, Mallia?)
___
to c. 1570 B.C.?)
B. Post-ThalassocracyMycenae,
Knossos, Pylos, ___
c. 1425 - c. 560 B.C. Troy, Athens, Thebes,
(merging into 14A) Tiryns, Miletus, Samos, Sparta,
Corinth, Phrygia,
Lydia
4. Indic
A. Pre-Asoka Maghada, Kosala,
Ujjain,
?
to c. 262 B.C. Vamsas, Kalinga
B. Pre-Engulfment Maghada, Bactria, Sakas,
1231
c. 231 B.C. - Kushana, Andhra, Kanauj,
Palas,
c. A.D. 1000 Gurjara-Prathiharas, Pallavas,
Chalukyas, Pandyas,
Rashtrakutas,
Cholas, Ghaznavids
5. Irish
(A. Pre-Engulfment (Tara,
Dublin,
Munster, ?
to c. A.D. 1050?) Ulster, Connaught?)
6. MexicanA. Pre-Montezuma Tenochtitlan, Texcoco,
?
to c. 1496 Tlacopan,
Azcapotzalco, Mixtecs,
Zapotecs,
Tarascans, Tlaxcala
7. PeruvianA. Pre-Huayna CapacCuzco, Charcas,
Chimu, Quito
?
to c. 1470
8. Chibchan(A. Pre-Engulfment(Tunja, Bacata?)
?
to c. 1530?)
9. IndonesianA. Pre-SrivijayanSrivijaya,
Malayu, Kalah
?
to c. A.D. 695
B. Pre-Madjapahit Srivijaya, Singosari,
?
(late 13th C. A.D.) Madjapahit
C. Pre-Engulfment Madjapahit, numerous
Malay ___
c. 1389 - c. 1550 States
Table
3. Continued
CivilizationStates
SystemsNotable StatesDuration
10.
West AfricanA. Pre-Ghana Ghana, Songhai
?
to 10th C. A.D.?
B. Pre-Mali Diara, Soso, Mossi, Manding,
?
11th C. A.D. - 1325 Songhai
C. Pre-Songhai Manding, Songhai,
Tuaregs
60? A.D. 1433 - 1493
11.
Mississippian(A. Pre-Natchez?)
?
(B. Post-Natchez?)
?
12. Far
EasternA. Pre-Ch'inCh'in, Chin, Han, Chao, Wei,
550
771 - 221 B.C. Ch'u, Ch'i, Lu, Sung, Yen
B. Pre-Sui 3
Kingdoms, W. Chin, 6
174
A.D. 184 - 589 Dynasties, 16 Kingdoms,
N. Wei, E. Wei, W.
Wei, N. Ch'i,
N. Chou, S. Ch'en,
Sui, Annam,
Champa, Nan-Chao, Tu-yu-hun
C. Pre-Mongol Uighurs, Tufan, Nan-chao, 5
529
A.D. 750 - 1279 Dynasties, 10 Kingdoms,
Khitans,
(Liao), Hsi-Hsia,
N. Sung,
Jurchen, (Ch'in), Ch'i, S. Sung,
Annam, Khmer,
Champa, Wu
Yueh, Mongols,
Koryo
13.
JapaneseA. Pre-Taiho Koguryo, Paekche, Silla, Imna,
402
c. A.D. 300 - 702 Yamato
B. Pre-Hideyoshi Ashikaga, Yoshino,
Enryakuji, 254
c. A.D. 1336 - 1590 Ikko, Various daimyo
14.
CentralA. Pre-AssurbanapalEgypt, Mitanni, Hittites,
Elam, 837
c. 1500 - 663 B.C. Babylon, Assyria, Urartu,
Damascus, Israel,
Tyre, Judah,
Ethiopia, Media,
Nubia
B. Pre-Darius Assyria, Armenia, Elam, 127
652-525 B.C. Babylonia, Media, Anshan,
Persia, Lydia, Egypt, Libya,
Ionia, Judah, Tyre,
Meroe
C. Pre-AugustanSyracuse,
Carthage,
296
316 - 20 B.C. Macedonia, Rome,
Seleucids,
Egypt, Pontus,
Armenia, Parthia
D. Post-Roman
A.D. 235 - presentRome, Persia,
Byzantium, 1750+
Arab Caliphate,
Frankish
Empire, Holy Roman
Empire, Mongol
Khanate, Ottoman Sultanate, Spain,
Austria, France,
Britain, Germany,
Japan, Russia,
America
Both
universal empires and states systems
ordinarily
have cores. The core in a univer-
sal
empire will usually be the metropolitan
territory
and people which conquered, united
and
governed the world system; the core in a
states
system will ordinarily include its
great-power
oligarchy.
Terminology and assumptions. At this
point,
it seems useful to stipulate some
definitions,
which will in due course become
issues,
since definitions contain the bones of
revered
but unnamed ancestral theories, and
disturb
the spirits rendered thereby non-
ancestral. In this case the terminology
offered
will contain and embody explicit
theoretical
assumptions, which (being assump-
tions)
will be expounded, but not defended.
An ideal-type civilization / world-system /
macrosociety,
because its characteristics are
unequally
distributed over space; and, because
they
are distributed centrically; and, because
their
unequal distributions overlap; and,
because
the inequalities are connected intrin-
sically
to its past history of expansion (for
civilizations
tend strongly to expand, Central
civilization
being an extreme rather than an
exceptional
case) characteristically possess-
es:
(1)
a core (central, older, ad-
vanced,
wealthy, powerful)
(2)
a semiperiphery strongly con-
nected
to the core (younger, fring-
eward,
remote, more recently attached, weaker,
poorer, more backward), and
(3)
a weakly connected periphery
(nomads;
peasant subsistence pro-
ducers
not yet attached to a city; and other
civilizations that trade but do not
habitually
fight or ally with the subject
civilization).
Civilizations usually begin in a geographi-
cally
restricted area composed of cities and
the
hinterlands their fighters can control;
this is
surrounded by an area to which the new
cities
are politically irrelevant. We may
call
these zones the (initial) urban core,
controlled
semiperiphery, and uncontrolled
periphery
of the civilization.
Civilizations usually expand over time by
raiding,
invading and conquering adjacent
areas;
and by sending out colony-cities and
military
settlements and trading forts; and by
fascinating
and addicting previously indiffer-
ent
peripheral people to their products (gods,
drugs,
laws, weapons, music, ornaments, com-
modities,
etc.). The territories affected by
this
civic expansion -- whether the expansion
be
colonialist, imperialist, cultic, develop-
mental
-- may be considered to have been
incorporated
by the civilization when their
occupants
-- settlers or settlees -- undergo
urbanization
and begin to interact politically
on a
regular basis -- as subjects, allies,
tributaries,
enemies -- with the civilization-
al
core. This area of later expansion and
control
is the (enlarged) semiperiphery of the
civilization.
Once a semiperiphery exists, and it comes
to
exist quickly, it also persists. Thus
one
of the
main continuing patterns that reveals
itself
in the history of civilizations and
world
systems is that they tend -- not by
definition,
but empirically -- to be markedly
geographically
tripartite. In the core,
military
force, political power, economic
wealth,
technological progress, cultural
prestige,
and theogony are concentrated. The
periphery
is far from the core in all senses,
containing
peoples and territories known but
scarcely
noted. The semiperiphery, more or
less
recently penetrated or engulfed, is a
zone
characterized by military subjection,
powerlessness,
relative poverty, technological
backwardness,
and low cultural prestige.
But while the tripartition of a civiliza-
tion is
very durable, no area has permanent
tenure
in any role, and tenure of coredom is
rather
precarious. The global civilization of
today,
which expanded from a Mesopotamian-
Egyptian
core, is not ruled from Uruk, nor
from
Egyptian Thebes; the lobbyists of the
world
do not seek favors in Agade, nor do its
engineers
and physicians study in an Imhotep
institute
of Gizeh; there are no great powers
based
in the Fertile Crescent; Babylon is not
the
world's Hollywood; Amon's
devotees
are few. Cores are not eternal;
civilizations
can outlast their origi-nal
cores. A history of cores must therefore be
kinematic,
describing their rises, shifts and
falls;
a theory of cores must ultimately be
dynamic,
accounting for their motion and
change.
A theory of peripheries must largely ac-
count
for their secular decline. Civilization
as such
-- the sum of the territories and
peoples
of the various civilizations -- has
expanded
continually since its origins, de-
spite
some regional setbacks and a single
holocivilizational
collapse (that of Missis-
sippian
civilization), by conquering and
colonizing
and assimilating its non-civilized
peripheral
peoples and territories. This
contradicts
the idea that civilizations rise
and
fall, rise and fall: they almost never
fall. It also contradicts the image of peace-
ful
sedentary civilized peoples always threat-
ened
and occasionally overwhelmed by neighbor-
ing
barbarians: most of the "overwhelming" has
been
inflicted by the civilized societies on
their
peripheral neighbors. When noncivilized
peripheral
peoples -- usually nomads -- attack
and
conquer civilized territory, the result
has
ordinarily been that they settle down,
take
over, enjoy ruling the civilization, and
continue
expanding it; on the whole, peripher-
al
peoples have not developed a sense of
peripheral
identity and pride sufficient to
impel
them to destroy the civilizations they
have
sporadically conquered. Civilizations,
on the
contrary, strongly tend to destroy
their
peripheries, through incorporation.
Tenure in the semiperiphery is more secure
than
core tenure (cores decline) or peripheral
tenure
(peripheries are devoured). But there
is some
upward mobility. A semiperipheral
area
remains semiperipheral as long as it is
politically
annexed to, urbanologically subor-
dinate
to, militarily dominated by, culturally
provincialized
by, economically outaccumulated
by,
technologically outcompeted by, and culti-
cally
devoted to, the old core. When and
where
the semiperiphery acquires states as
influential,
forces as dangerous, cities as
populous
and wealthy, culture as attractive,
technique
as progressive, gods as efficacious
as
those of the core, that part of the semi-
periphery
becomes core; the core area expands
to
encompass it. And if the old core
should
peak
and decline, be overtaken and passed in
its
military and political, demographic and
economic,
cultural and technical and theologi-
cal
development by its semiperiphery (or a
part of
it), so that the old core becomes a
historic
backwater, becomes marginal to the
affairs
of the civilization, while the former
semiperiphery
becomes the new core, we may
properly
say that the core of the civilization
has
shifted. And cores do shift: witness
Karnak,
witness Babylon.
The
ideas of core-periphery distinctions
and
inequalities are important to theories of
civilizations
(especially Carroll Quigley's
evolutionary
theory, 1961) and of world sys-
tems
(especially Immanuel Wallerstein's world-
systems
analysis -- Hopkins, Wallerstein, et
al.,
1972; Wallerstein, 1974, 1975, 1979,
1982,
1983, 1984). I would like to make a
stab at
roughly locating cores for the civili-
zations/world
systems I recognize, discuss the
empirics
of their gross movement patterns, and
juxtapose
these "facts" to the theories of
Quigley
and Wallerstein -- which differ termi-
nologically
and substantively from each other,
and
from the exposition just given -- so as to
judge
which, or what combination, or what
alternative
theory, seems most helpful in
describing,
explaining, and projecting core-
periphery
behavior.
Empirics:
Cores and Core Shifts in Thirteen
Civilizations
The
most direct approach to sketching the
general
locations and movements of civiliza-
tional
cores, as defined above, would be to
assume
that in a universal empire, the capital
city
and metropolitan district have politico-
military
core status by definition, and proba-
bly
contain the cultic core, extract and
consume
economic surplus, maintain the cosmop-
olis
with the largest urban population, sup-
port
the cultural elite, and contain the loci
of
invention: hence their location coincides
with
the core, and shifts of capital/metropole
are
core shifts. This assumption is a
useful
ideal-type
fiction rather than a universally
true
empirical generalization; we shall see
that
exceptions soon emerge. A desirable
future
project would be to measure rather than
assume
these consistencies, and observe the
order
in which preeminences are gained and
lost by
cores. Correspondingly, in a states
system
the great powers, the rich states, the
religious
centers, the megalopoleis, the
cultural
producers and critics, the great
engineers,
should be assumed to correspond
closely
enough that one of these measures will
ordinarily
suffice to demark a core state,
absent
contrary data. Where there are contra-
dictions,
power will take precedence over
wealth
in our narrative. In the civiliza-
tional
game, diamonds may be forever; but
clubs
are always trumps.
1. Egyptian. Egyptian civilization was
frequently
united under a world state; core
shifts
are indicated by movements of the
capital. After a predynastic period which may
have
been all-core/no-core (primacy dispersed
among
nomes), an Upper Egyptian state con-
quered
the country c. 2850 B.C., but then
moved
its capital to Lower Egypt (Memphis),
where
power remained in Dynasties I-IV, to c.
2440
B.C. The kings were war-leaders, and
gods,
gods'-sons, or high-priests, as well;
the
pyramids display the compresence of tech-
nique
(architecture) and wealth (manpower
mobilization,
funeral offerings) with art and
power.
The Vth dynasty (2440-2315) sees a small
expansion
of the core to nearby Heliopolis
(Lower
Egypt), and power-sharing with the
priesthood
of the sun-cult of Re.
Dynasty VI (c.2315-2175), witnessing the
loss of
a universal state and the rise of a
states
system under the local "nomarchs," also
seems
to reflect the evaporation of the Lower
Egyptian
core without any clear replacement.
This
then seems to be an all-core/no-core period.
A new core, more dispersed or perhaps
faster-shifting,
seems to have emerged gradu-
ally,
with prominent states appearing at
Memphis
(Dynasty VII) in Lower Egypt, Coptos-
Abydos
(VIII) in Upper Egypt, Heracleopolis
(IX-X)
in Middle Egypt, and Thebes (XI) in
Upper
Egypt. (These dynastic capitals are
partly
simultaneous, partly sequential.) In
due
course the emerging core shrank, receding
southwards,
until it stopped at Thebes (Middle
Kingdom,
under Mentuhotep II, c. 2050).
A Theban dynasty (XII, c. 1991-1786) re-
turned
the capital northward, to Lisht (Lower
Egypt),
near Memphis, while maintaining the
imperial
god Amon at Karnak (Upper Egypt),
near
Thebes. This is a notable instance of
core
partition and specialization, an excep-
tion to
the general practice of concentrated
function.
Circa 1785-1570 Egyptian civilization was
politically
fragmented under dynasties XIII-
XVII,
partly simultaneous regional dynasties:
XIII at
Thebes, XIV at Xois (Lower Egypt), XV
--
Hyksos invaders -- at Avaris (Lower Egypt),
XVI
Hyksos, XVII Thebes. This may be
another
all-core
period, or one of a rapidly-shifting
core.
Egypt was reunited under dynasty XVII
(Thebes),
during whose tenure Egyptian civili-
zation
couples with Mesopotamian to form
Central
civilization; until then, the mili-
tary,
political, religious and economic struc-
ture of
Egyptian civilization was Theban-core.
This capsule history may be read as fol-
lows,
in core terms. (1) There was usually,
but not
always (predynastic, dynasty VI, and
perhaps
XIII-XVII), a semiperiphery in Egyp-
tian
civilization. (2) Its core shifted
frequently,
from the time-perspective of the
civilization. (3) The duration of core sta-
bility,
or speed of core shift, fluctuated,
with no
core enduring more than 4 centuries.
(4)
Core preeminences -- military, political,
economic,
religious, technical, cultural --
were
usually, but not always (dynasty XII's
divided
core) collocated in space. (5) Ex-
core
areas (Memphis in XII, Thebes in XVII)
sometimes
regained core status; but core
shifts
more often recruited new areas (Heli-
opolis
in V, Coptos-Abydos in VIII, Heracleo-
polis
in IX, Thebes in XI, Xois in XIV, Avaris
in XV).
The Egyptian core history shows directional
movement
combined with expansive-contractive
pulsation,
in the following sequence: all-
core/no-core
-a Southern core - a Northern
core -
all-core/no-core - Middle - Southern -
Northern
- all-core/no-core - Southern. Two
different
rhythms may underlie this sequence.
The
core shuttles between south and north,
implying
the fall of an old core to semi-
peripheral
status simultaneous with the rise
of a
semiperipheral area to core status;
whatever
conditions rendered aged cores inca-
pable
of continuing seem to have been elimi-
nated
by a term in the semiperipheral purgato-
ry. Behind this shuttle pulses the longer
rhythm
of states system -- universal empire,
in
which decentralization and core-enlargement
alternate
with centralization and core-con-
traction,
implying an alternation of equaliza-
tion
processes -- limited semiperipheral rise
or
limited core decline -- with polarization
processes. The core process is clearly relat-
ed to,
but not reducible to, the states system
--
universal empire political process.
2. Mesopotamian. The Uruk-core period of
the
second half of the 4th millennium B.C.
appears
to have been succeeded by an all-core
period. (Cf. Algaze, 1989.) The Early Dynas-
tic 1st
dynasty of Uruk may be legendary, but
the
legend suggests another period in which
Sumer,
and within it Uruk, had core status.
Later
core evolutions include:
c. 2600-2500 Akkad (Kish)
c. 2500-2360 Sumer (Ur, Lagash, Umma)
c. 2360-2180 Akkad (Agade)
c. 2180-2060 dispersed -- Akkad (Guti of
Agade)
and Sumer (Uruk,
Lagash)
-- hence all-core/no-core
c. 2060-1950 Sumer (Ur)
c. 1950-1700 dispersed -- Ur, Isin, Larsa,
Elam,
Nippur, Babylon,
Mari,
Assyria, Qatna, Aleppo, Eshnunna
c. 1700-1530 Akkad (Babylon)
c. 1530-1500 dispersed -- Hittites, Kassite
Babylon,
Sea-Land.
(Beyond about 1500 BC Mesopotamian and
Egyptian
civilizations are, as noted
previously,
understood as parts a larger,
Central
civilization, whose core
history
is capsulized infra.)
Most generalizations applied above to
Egyptian
core history appear largely applica-
ble to
Mesopotamian as well. There was usual-
ly, but
not always, a semiperiphery. The core
shifted
"frequently" -- from the civiliza-
tion's
duration-perspective! Core preem-
inences
were usually combined -- but Nippur
was a
specialized religious center. Cores
lasted
a century or two. Old cores occasion-
ally,
exceptionally, resurged. There was a
north-south
core alternation or "shuttle," and
a
separate concentration/dispersal rhythm
associated
with a states system -- universal
empire
oscillation. Mesopotamia was, however,
longer
and more frequently in a "dispersed" or
"all-core"
condition.
The latter difference may have been conse-
quential. Wesson has argued in general (-
1978:1-18)
and specifically with respect to
Sumer
and Egypt (1978:42-44, 90-91) that
"pluralism"
of several sorts been causally
connected
to creativity in civilizations. A
similar
point is made by Ekholm and Friedman
(1982:96). Core dispersion would seem to be
yet
another sort of "pluralism," likely to be
similarly
connected.
3. Aegean.
An historical "gross anatomy"
reveals
a Cretan core (c. 2600-1425), with
palaces
on Crete (Knossos, Mallia, Phaistos,
Hagia
Triada) and dispersed trade-raid-taxing
centers
("Minoa" seaports). This is
succeeded
by a
Greek-mainland core (c. 1425-1100, with
centers
at Mycenae, Pylos, Tiryns, Athens,
Thebes),
and a semiperiphery including Milet-
us,
Melos, Knossos, Troy. This structure is
in turn
replaced, after an all-core epoch of
many
poleis, by a rather dispersed largely
Anatolian
and insular core (c. 750-560) in-
cluding
Miletus, Phocaea, Chalcis, Eretria,
Rhodes,
Lesbos, Thera, Corinth, Megara, Ach-
aea, as
centers of colonialism around much of
the
Mediterranean; plus non-Greek Phrygia and
then
Lydia, which eventually provided the link
that
brought Aegean civilization into Central
civilization
during this period. The Cretan
core
fell as the Mainland semiperiphery rose;
the
Anatolian semiperiphery rose only after
much of
the Mainland core fell.
There was usually, but not always, an
Aegean
semiperiphery. The Aegean core did
shift. The Cretan core was however quite
durable,
lasting perhaps 800 years; "occasion-
al"
rather than "frequent" core shifts seem to
characterize
Aegean civilization (one per
millennium,
vs. 8 per millennium in Mesopota-
mian,
and a similar frequency for Egyptian).
There
was no "shuttle" with a clear renascence
of a
former core region.
4. Indic.
In the Indus valley epoch (c.
2500-1500),
a dual core emerged, upstream at
Harappa
(Punjab), downstream at Mohenjo-Daro
(Sind). The Aryan conquest and city-breaking
destroyed
this core, an all-core/no-core epoch
ensuing
(inhabited ruined cities), until a new
core
arose in the Ganges Valley, where Hasti-
napur
was a major center to the flood in c.
900
BC. Though the sixteen great states of
Indic
civilization around 600 BC stretched
from
the Punjab (Gandhara, Kamboja) to the
Deccan
(Asmaka), most cities (Sravasti, Kapil-
avastu,
Rummindei, Kusinagara, Sarnath, Varan-
asi/Benares,
Rajagriha, Bodhgaya/Sambodhi) lay
among
six states (Kosala, Malla, Vrijji, Kasi,
Anga,
Magadha) of the middle and lower Gange-
tic
basin; this represents the emergence,
perhaps
even the re-emergence, of a Ganges
core.
The Maurya conquest and empire contracted
the
core to the metropolitan state, Magadha,
and its
capital and religious center Patalipu-
tra/Patna
c. 260 B.C. With the fall of
Maurya
after c. 230, the core as expanded as
semiperipheries
rose to core status -- Ionians
(Yavanas)
in Bactria and the Punjab; Chera,
Pandya
and Chola in the far south in the 2nd
century
BC; Saka-Pahlava and Yue-chi Kushana
in the
1st century BC and Andhra-Pallava from
the 1st
century AD. The epoch seems no-
core/all-core.
A brief Kushana empire was established in
the
north (upper Ganges and Indus basins) by
Kanishka
at Peshawar c. A.D. 78-100. inciden-
tally
re-forming an Indic core. Another
dispersal
and all-core period followed, with
Satavahana/Satakani
in the Deccan, Ujjain/Mal-
wa,
Pallava, Ceylon, all noteworthy centers.
The Gupta empire, once more with Magadha as
metropole
and Patna as capital c. 330-c. 500,
restored
a Gangetic civilizational core,
though
not quite qualifying as a universal
state. Following the Guptas, there was a
dispersal
again: Huns (Ephthalites), Malwa,
Magadha,
Ujjain, Pallava, Chalukya, Chola,
Pandya
all notable.
A Gangetic empire was founded by Harsha at
Kanauj
606-647, reconstituting a core. Then
once
more a dispersal: Kanauj, Gurjara-Prati-
hara,
Pala, Rashtrakuta, Rajputs, Sind, Chola,
Pallava,
Chalukya, Vengi, Pandya, Ceylon,
Chandella,
Paramara, Yaminis of Ghazni.
If we consider (as I prefer to) the engulf-
ment of
Indic by Central civilization to have
been
accomplished by the Muslim invasions in
the
11th century, India next became a semi-
periphery
of Central civilization, and remains
so. If we do not consider Indic civilization
to have
been integrated into Central civiliza-
tion
till the 18th century, the period from
the
11th to the 18th centuries continued the
alternation
of north Indian core empires with
states-system
chaos, hence of semi-
peripheralization
with core expansion.
In either case, after an initial core
shift, the
pattern of a core empire/semi-
periphery
alternating with a states sys-
tem/expanded
core is well established. Howev-
er, the
dispersed-core or all-core pattern
predominates,
and contracted cores are short-
lived. Cores are preferentially located in
the
north, with some alternation between
Ganges-valley
and Indus-valley metropoles, but
a
stronger inclination to the Ganges.
Magadha
was
twice a metropole.
5. Irish.
Turgesius (Turgeis) the Viking,
after
intensive looting from A.D. 837 on, set
up a
"longport" or naval camp at Dublin in 842
for
greater convenience in plundering Irish
states,
churches and monasteries. The many
Irish
kings and occasional hegemonic high
kings
resisted. The Norse pressed, the Irish
pressed
back, each nation fought within it-
self;
Dublin sacked Armagh and was itself
sacked. By 842 Irish-Norse alliances are
recorded
in the Annals of Ulster, by 856 the
"Gallogoidel"
Norse-Irish mixed bands were a
distinct
fighting group. No core was evident.
Periodically an Irish dynasty or king did
achieve
hegemonic high-kingship, first the
northern
Ui Neill of Ulster (from Malachy I,
846-862,
to Malachy II, 980-1002 and 1014-
1022),
then upstart kings of Munster (Brian
Boru,
1002-1014, Turlock O Brien 1064-1086,
Muircertach
O Brien 1086-1119), of Connacht
(Turlock
O Connor 1121-1156, Rory O Connor
1166-2286),
or of Ulster (Muircertach Mac
Lochlainn
1156-1166). Some of the eleventh-
and
twelfth-century high kings achieved hege-
mony
over the Norse cities -- raided, took
hostages,
imposed tribute (Malachy II and
Brian
Boru and Muircertach Mac Lochlainn on
Dublin)
or actually reigned from them (Turlock
O Brien
from Limerick) or named their kings
(Turlock
and Muircertach O Brien, and Turlock
O
Connor, for Dublin). One could defend
the
proposition
that there was an Ulster core
around
1000, a Munster core around 1100, a
fast-moving
unstable core in the 12th century
(prior
to the Norman invasions which attached
Irish
to Central civilization). However,
power
seems to have been so dispersed, person-
al,
resisted, and rapidly displaced that, at
time
scales comparable to those at which cores
persisted
in other civilizations, there was no
clearly
definable core to Irish civilization.
All the
kingdoms seem to have had rough equal-
ity,
roughly upheld.
6. Mexican. About 1200-600 B.C. the "-
Olmec"
area appears to be core, with Gulf
coast
sites (San Lorenzo, La Venta, Tres
Zapotes)
and Basin of Mexico sites (Tlatilco).
By 600 B.C., the valley of Oaxaca (Zapotec
Monte
Alban, with the Temple of the Danzantes
showing
slaughtered "Olmecs," and
Mitla) had
become
the core. Semiperipheries rose: Teoti-
huacan
in the Basin, Mayan Kaminaljuyu (Guate-
mala
City) in the Guatemalan Highlands in the
Late
Preclassic (300 BC-AD 250), perhaps
qualifying
this as an all-core/no-core period.
From about A.D. 200-700
("Classic" period)
the
core was the Basin of Mexico, centered on
Teotihuacan;
semiperipheries seem to have
included
the Gulf Coast (El Tajin; Teotihuacan
pottery),
Oaxaca (Monte Alban; pottery; Zapo-
tec
quarter of Teotihuacan), and the Maya
region
(probable colonization of Kaminaljuyu
as a
subimperial center; Teotihuacan figures
on
Tikal stelae, Teotihuacan-style pottery at
Copan
and Escuintla). Teotihuacan influence
waned
and was not replaced among the Maya in
the 6th
century, and the Late Classic Lowland
Maya
rose to core status in the 7th and 8th
centuries.
There was a collapse at Teotihuacan around
700-750,
apparently under the impact of north-
ern-peripheral
"Chichimec" invaders (including
Toltecs). After the destruction and abandon-
ment of
Teotihuacan there seems to have been
an
all-core/no-core period: Cholula, Tula and
Xochicalco
in Central Mexico, El Tajin on the
Gulf
Coast, and Late Classic Maya Lowland
Palenque,
Piedras Negras, Tikal, Uaxactun,
Copan,
were all of importance.
The rise of Toltec Tula more or less coin-
cides
with the fall of the Southern Lowlands
Classic
Maya cities in the "Epiclassic" 9th-
10th
centuries (Copan abandoned after 800,
Palenque
after 810, Tikal abandoned end of
10th
century), and of Monte Alban (abandoned
c.900)
in the 10th, suggesting that the Basin
of
Mexico was once again moving to core sta-
tus. During this Basin-core epoch (11th-12th
centuries),
West and Northwest Mexico rose to
be an
important semiperiphery, and the Maya
lands
declined to semiperipheral status:
Chichen
Itza was occupied by Toltecs c. 1000-
1180
and dominated the Northern Maya Lowlands;
the
Southern Lowlands remained depopulated;
the
Highlands showed Toltec influence.
Tula and the Toltec empire collapsed in the
13th
century, perhaps again under the impact
of
northern-peripheral "Chichimec" invaders.
The
14th century was again all-core/no-core:
the
Tarascans at Tzintuntzan in West Mexico,
the
Mixtec in Oaxaca (Monte Alban and Mitla),
the
Totonac at Cempoala on the Gulf Coast,
Quiche
in the Guatemalan Highlands, Mayapan
dominating
the Northern Yucatan Lowlands, the
Tepanecs
at Azcapotzalco in the Basin, mercan-
tile
Putun sea-traders at Cozumel and along
the
Gulf coast.
The 15th century saw the rise of the Aztecs
of
Tenochtitlan, hence the return of a Mexico-
Basin
core.
In
shorter compass: a Gulf-and-Basin dual
core; a
shift of the core to Oaxaca; an all-
core/no-core
epoch; a Basin core; an all-
core/no-core
epoch; a Basin core; an all-
core/no-core
epoch; a Basin core. There was a
semiperiphery
about as often as not. Core
lifetimes
ranged from two to six centuries.
The
Basin of Mexico was usually, but not
always,
the core; no "shuttle" appears, but
the
equalization/polarization rhythm is dis-
tinct,
though a universal empire emerged only
from
the final polarization.
7. Peruvian. Six phases seem distinguish-
able:
(1) Initial Ceramic, 1900-1200 B.C.: in
monumental
communally constructed ceremonial
complexes
-- highland Kotosh before 1800,
coastal
El Paraiso and central-coast Cerro
Sechin
(c. 1200). Probably all-core/no-core.
(2) Early Horizon, 1200-300. Widespread
cultural
unity in Chavin style, after N.
Highland
Chavin de Huantar, perhaps a Kotosh
offshoot,
spread through most of Peru, with a
north
coast manifestation (Cupisnique) and a
south
coast region (Paracas). Chavin seems to
be the
civilizational core on grounds of
cultural
domination; no universal state or
core
empire is apparent.
(3) Early Intermediate, 300 B.C.-A.D. 700:
Cultural
diversity, nationalism, interregional
warfare. Coastal sites: Vicus, Moche (milita-
ristic-expansionist),
Lima (Maranga, Pachacam-
ac,
Cerro de Trinidad sites), Nazca (Cahuachi,
Tambo
Viejo), Atacameno. Highland sites:
Cajamarca,
Recuay, Huarpa (Huari; expansion-
ist),
Waru, Tiahuanaco (expansionist). Re-
gional
cultural variety and political polycen-
tricity
suggest this was an all-core/no-core
period.
(4) Middle Horizon, A.D. 700-1100. Cultur-
al
unity under Tiahuanaco (southern) and Huari
(northern)
cultures and empires, with the
Huari
style derivative and the Huari center
and
empire shorter-lived (though greater in
extent,
with sites at Cajamarca, Cajamar-
quilla,
Pachacamac, Chakipampa, Pacheco,
Piquillacta). Probably best classified there-
fore as
a twin-core period but (as with Har-
appa/Mohenjo
Daro), arguably either Huari-core
or
Tiahuanaco-core.
(5) Late Intermediate 1100-1438/78. Cul-
tural
diversity. Peruvian coastal cultures,
states
and styles: Chimu (Chanchan), Chancay,
Pachacamac,
Chincha (La Centinela), Ica.
Highlands:
Cajamarca, Chanca, Killke (Cuzco),
Lucre,
Colla, Lupaca. Constant fighting,
several
empires: all core/no-core.
(6) Late Horizon 1438-1532. Cultural unity
or
unification imposed via Inca expansion from
Cuzco,
with notable sites at Machu Picchu,
Cajamarca,
Huanuco Viejo, Cushichaca, Tambo
Colorado,
Ollantaytambo.
The sequence seems then to be: all core/no-
core;
Chavin core; all-core/no-core; Huari-
Tiahuanaco
core; all-core/no-core; Cuzco core.
The
move from Chavin to Huari-Tiahuanaco was
southward,
that to Cuzco northward again.
Core
and all-core periods were very long,
especially
earlier, e.g., the 9-century Chavin
core
and 1000-year all-core Early Intermediate
period. All-core seems the norm. Core epochs
were
too few to display a shuttle. Old cores
did not
resurge.
8. Chibchan. At the Spanish conquest,
Chibchan
civilization was politically bipolar,
with
some indication that the more sparsely
populated,
economically advanced, militarily
aggressive
state of the Zipa in Cundirramarca
(Cundinamarca)
was a semiperipheral upstart
attacking
the smaller, denser, more tradition-
al,
older religious-center core states allied
with
the Zaque in Boyaca, and that the Spanish
conquest
anticipated a core shift (and imple-
mented
it when the Zipa's capital of Bacata
became
the Spanish administrative center Santa
Fe de
Bogota). But there is not a long enough
archaeological
record for the Chibchan case to
contribute
much to our inquiry into core-
periphery
kinematics.
9. Indonesian. The locations of the key
states
are not all certain. A tentative
sequence
would be: Sumatran core (Ko-ying) 2nd
century
A.D.; all core/no-core 3rd-4th centu-
ries;
Javan core (Ho-lo-tan) 5th century;
Sumatran
core (Kan-to-li) 6th century; all-
core/no-core
7th century; Sumatran core (Sriv-
ijaya)
8th-12th centuries; all-core/no-core
13th
century (rise of Singosari in Java and
Ligor
in Malaya); Javan core 14th century
(Madjapahit);
Malayan core 15th century (Mal-
acca);
engulfed by Central civilization in
16th
century, perhaps with the capture of
Malacca.
This sequence shows an oscillation between
core
and no-core/all-core phases (4 core, 3
all-core
periods) and a core shuttle among
Sumatra
(3 times), Java (twice) and Malaya
(once). The all-core phase prevails earlier,
the
core phase later. When the core
shifted,
it
returned to a former core area somewhat
more
often than it moved to a never-core
location.
10. West African. A case could be made
that
the core of West African civilization
was, and
remained throughout its autonomous
history,
the general area of the great bend of
the
Niger river. However, given that the
shift
of power over the centuries was from
Ghana's
universal empire (Kumbi Saleh), to the
Soso
hegemony, to Malian empire (Timbuktu), to
Songhai
empire (Gao, Timbuktu), to the Hausa
confederation
(Zaria, Kano, Katsina), and that
this
sequence shows a general tendency (the
Soso
ascendancy and Songhai return to Timbuktu
excepted)
eastward and downriver, it makes
somewhat
more sense to speak of a slow and
fairly
steady eastward drift, with Kumbi out
of the
core in the 13th century after its sack
by
Sumanguru of Soso (1203) and its destruc-
tion by
Sun Diata of Mali (1240). The overall
drift
is rather more like the Aegean than the
Egyptian
pattern.
11. Mississippian. The Adena core is in
the
Ohio Valley; Hopewell has an Ohio and an
Illinois
twin-core; the Temple Mound core
seems
to lie in Illinois, around Cahokia.
This
may be treated as a single very slow
shift,
or an expansion to and contraction
around
a new, formerly semiperipheral site.
It is
not clear whether all-core epochs were
interpolated.
12. Far Eastern. Macroscopically, northern
China
was the core area of Far Eastern civili-
zation
from Shang times (late 2nd millennium
B.C.)
through the Later Han (3rd century
A.D.). When one looks more closely the pic-
ture
becomes at once more blurred, more shift-
ing,
and more complex: there are cores within
the core. While the economic-demographic-
cultural
core seems to remain in the Yellow
River
plain, political-military power (imperi-
al
capitals; great powers) oscillates.
Shang
capitals
(e.g., the last, An-yang/Yin) seem to
lie
within the economic core. The Chou,
formerly
a semiperipheral client people, first
establish
a metropole on their home territory
in the
Wei Valley (capital Sian), then move
east
(to Lo-yang), nearer the economic-demo-
graphic
core.
With the breakup of the Eastern Chou core
empire,
the civilizational core remains in
North
China, but again partitions: small
populous
rich central states, politically and
militarily
weak but culturally progressive,
are
surrounded by large young states which
become
politico-militarily dominant. This
period
is therefore a split-core taxonomic
puzzle.
The Ch'in and Former Han universal empires
continue
the core split: the political and
communications
center is again in the Wei
valley
(Ch'ang-an), the economic-demographic
center
downriver in the Yellow River plain.
The
Later Han ends the division by again
moving
the capital eastward, to the westerly
fringe
of the demographic core (Lo-yang).
The Three Kingdoms symbolize the expansion
of the
core area from North China to Szechwan
and the
Yangtze basins, and seem to reflect an
all-core
epoch. This continues during the
Southern
and Northern Dynasties, accompanied
by a
shift of population from the Yellow River
to the
Yangtze basin due to steppe-nomad
invasions,
destruction and depopulation, which
push
the core southward.
A new politico-military power emerges in
the
northwest under Sino-nomad elites and
states,
and under the Sui and T'ang states
creates
first a core empire and then a univer-
sal
state encompassing the bulk of the semi-
periphery
as well as the core.
From late T'ang onward, the expansion of
the
civilized area without full acculturation
of
Koreans, Khitans, Uighurs, Tibertans, Tai,
Annamese,
Tanguts, etc. makes it appropriate
to
refer to "China" as such as the core area
of the
Far Eastern civilization -- meaning by
"China"
approximately the territories united
by the
Northern Sung, i.e. excluding 20th-
century
Korea, Manchuria, Mongolia, Sinkiang,
Tibet,
Yunnan, Vietnam. The enlarged core was
divided
by Chin and Southern Sung, reunited by
the
Mongols, and may be considered to have
remained
the Far Eastern core under Ming and
Manchus,
down to the absorption of Far Eastern
by
Central civilization in the 19th-20th
centuries.
Far Eastern civilization has normally had a
core. Core preeminences have however often
been
partitioned in space: politico-military
and
demographic-economic-cultural cores split
apart,
then drift together. The Far Eastern
core
has tended to expand more than to shift,
even
more markedly than will be seen in the
core
history of Central civilization. The
Far
Eastern
core has been very durable indeed. On
the
other hand, the cultural hegemony of the
core
states (ability to Sinicize peripheral
peoples
as or after they are semi-
peripheralized)
diminished noticeably in the
Later
Han, and again diminished with the later
T'ang.
13. Japanese. The Nara period (710-784)
sees
what is probably the first core along
with
the first fixed capital. The move to
nearby
Heian (Kyoto), in 794, leaving the Nara
monasteries
behind, is a local shift of this
rather
tiny core. The division of function
between
administrative-religious Kyoto and
politico-military
Kamakura (1185-1333) expands
the
core, with both capitals serving as cul-
tural-artistic
centers.
Decentralization in the Ashikaga period
(1336-1568)
sees the growth of economic cen-
ters --
Sakai (Osaka), Hyogo (Kobe), Hakata
(Fukuoka)
-- while the politico-cultural
capital
returns to Kyoto after the divided
dynasties
of the Yoshino period (1336-1391);
this
seems an all-core/no-core period.
Further commercial decentralization (Naga-
saki
1570-1638, Hirada 1609-1641) is reversed
by the
Azuchi-Momoyama national unification
period
(1568-1600), during which the function-
ing
core contracts, perhaps as narrowly as to
the Oda
castle at Azuchi (1578-1582), the
Hideyoshi
castle at Osaka (1538-1598) and
finally
in the Tokugawa period (1600-1868) to
the
Tokugawa military base of Edo-Tokyo, which
becomes
the political-economic and cultural
center. Kyoto remains the formal capital and
enjoys
a brief renaissance in the last decades
of the
Tokugawa period, which marks the begin-
ning of
the 19th-20th century incorporation of
Japanese
into Central civilization.
The reckoning would seem to be: an all-
core/no-core
period; core at Nara; core shift
to
Heian; core expansion Kyoto-Kamakura, and
later
Kyoto-Yoshino; an all-core period; core
at
Edo-Tokyo. The core epochs seem the
norm,
lasting
longer than the all-core periods. A
functionally
split core prevails.
Empirics:
Expansion and Core History of Cen-
tral
Civilization
Writing
an approximate history of core areas
and
core shifts in Central civilization will
be a
considerably more complex undertaking
than
doing the same for even Indic and Far
Eastern
civilizations, the next most taxing
candidates. The task is complicated by Cen-
tral
civilization's 3 1/2-millennium expan-
sion,
which has converted periphery into
semiperiphery
and allowed semiperipheral areas
to
enter an expanding core. Before
locating
the
motion and change of the Central core over
time
and space, we need to estimate the expan-
sion of
Central civilization as a whole. That
expansion
can be usefully examined, and the
issues
that must arise in its study exposed,
by
searching for the frontiers of Central
civilization
over time.
It is convenient to use eight compass
directions
in this examination. Central
civilization,
starting from a core in the Nile
Valley
+ the Fertile Crescent, has expanded
southeastward
into Arabia; eastward into Iran,
India,
Southeast and East Asia; northeastward
into
Central Asia and Siberia; northward into
the
Caucasus, the Ukraine, Russia; northwest-
ward
into Anatolia, the Balkans, northwest
Europe;
westward through the Mediterranean
basin,
then to the New World; southwestward
into
West Africa; and southward into the
Sudan,
the Horn, East, Central and Southern
Africa. What follows is a sketch, again
hypothetical
and preliminary, of what should
became
a fertile field of civilization re-
search:
suggested answers (or subquestions) to
the
question, When did Central civilization
arrive
where, how, and what did it encounter
there?
The "arrival" of an extant
civilization in
a new
territory is represented by its estab-
lishment
of strong and durable political
links,
conflictual or cooperative -- conquest,
imperial
integration, recurrent war, alliance,
etc. Its imputed pace of expansion will
depend
upon the intensity and duration of the
political
connections established by threat,
attack,
invasion, conquest, occupation etc.
Brief
or weak linkings will pose problems: an
urban
area that perceives a continuing threat
from
another is linked to it in a single
political
system precisely by the threat; yet
an
intercivilizational interaction, much
stronger
than a mere threat -- invasion and
conquest
-- may, if the invaders go home and
never
return, or the conquerors lose all
political
linkage with their home civiliza-
tion,
produce no lasting or significant trans-
actional
linkage at all between the "source"
and
"target" civilizations.
When some picture of the local
"arrivals"
of
Central civilization is developed, the
question
of when (if at all) the Central core
arrived
in the same territories can then be
addressed. Core status has surely arrived
when
and where, in a states system, one of the
independent
semiperipheral states (e.g., the
United
States) becomes a Great Power; or, in
a
universal state, when a new capital city is
built
in a semiperipheral area (e.g., Constan-
tinople). A semiperipheral state, or a non-
metropolitan
province of a world state, may or
may not
have attained core status -- the
circumstances
of each particular case would
have to
be examined -- if, in a peaceful epoch
of its
world system, it happened to become the
system's
center of wealth, culture, invention,
or
piety.
Central civilization, and its core, have on
occasion
contracted or shifted. We must be
able to
say when a territory is lost to a
civilization,
or to its core, in general.
A territory is lost to a civilization when
it is
de-urbanized, or when its cities' ongo-
ing
politico-military connection thereto is
cut, by
voluntary mutual isolation or by the
de-urbanization
or depopulation of an inter-
vening
and connecting area. A territory is
thrust
out of the core when conquered and
occupied. It slips out of the core peacefully
when,
declining in power, wealth and prestige,
its
provinces/states and peoples come to be
patronized,
taken for granted, treated as
backward,
uplifted, advised, educated, helped,
used,
abused, proselytized, enlightened,
snubbed,
etc., when previously they had been
accustomed
to patronize, help, enlighten and
abuse. Measurement of peaceful loss of core
status
is more difficult, or requires inspec-
tion of
longer historical durations, than
measurement
of loss through conquest.
The southeastward expansion of Central
civilization. I would provisionally treat the
trade
settlements in Bahrein (Dilmun) and
Qatar
from the late 2nd millennium B.C., and
the
Yemenite kingdoms of Minya, Sheba, Qataban
and
Hadramaut from the early to middle first
millennium
B.C., as southeastward extensions
of the
Central semiperiphery to incorporate
coastal
Arabia.
The dating for the incorporation of the
Persian
Gulf coast will remain provisional
until
political-archeological data are recov-
ered. The Red Sea coast dating involves a
centralist/pluralist
controversy. It could be
argued,
though I would not do so, that an
autonomous
Yemenite civilization existed from
at
least c. 750 B.C. ("Saba" known to the
Assyrians)
to some later date when it was
incorporated
into Central civilization: c. 500
B.C.
(consolidation of Sheba in response to
Persian
conquests in N. Arabia); or the 1st
Century
B.C. (Roman invasion of Yemen); or
the 1st
Century A.D. (formation of Axum as a
"bridge"
state between Central and "Yemenite"
civilizations?);
or the 4th Century A.D.
(first
Axumite conquest of Yemen); or the 6th
century
A.D. (second Axumite conquest of
Yemen;
Persian conquest of Yemen); or even the
7th
century (Muslim conquest of Yemen and
Syria). But I prefer the interpretation that
the
Persian Gulf and Red Sea settlements
represent
southeastward extensions of the
Central
semiperiphery, rather than autonomous
civilizations,
in which case they have re-
mained
outside the Central core until today.
The eastward expansion of Central civiliza-
tion. Elamite Susa seems to represent the
initial
eastward outpost of Central civili-
zation's
core, Susa's hinterland the initial
semiperipheral
Ostmark. The Medean-Persian-
Macedonian
eastmarch is the Indus, while
Persepolis/Istakhr,
Ecbatana/Hamadan, and Rayy
join
Susa as the easterly core cities in that
age. Central civilization's frontier retreats
westward
with the Seleucid evacuation before
the
Mauryas. Menander's kingdom advances it
eastward
again, to the upper Indus. The Roman
universal
state drives Mesopotamia out of the
core
into semiperipheral status; it returns to
the
core with the Sassanids and Abbasids.
The
Surens
and Sakas probably succeed the Greek
principalities
as easterly marchers. The
Kushans,
White Huns and Turks probably jitter
between
peripheral and semiperipheral status,
and the
eastern frontier jitters with them.
The eastern frontier of Central civiliza-
tion is
pushed into the Punjab again by Mahmud
of
Ghazni's raids around 1000 A.D. and deeper
into
India by the Delhi dynasties. The
Mongol
invasion
destroys some of the eastern urban
extensions
of Central civilization, especially
in
Afghanistan. Timur's invasions of India
re-establish
the (hostile) connections, and
the
Mughals complete the linkage of the Indic
to the
Central civilizational network, thereby
pushing
the eastern frontier of Central civi-
lization
to the delta of the Ganges.
As regards the easterly progress of the
Central
core: Semiperipheral Anatolia begins a
long
tenure as core territory with Constan-
tine,
and returns to the semiperiphery with
the
19th-century Ottoman decline.
Mesopotamia
enjoys
core status until Timur's wars drive it
down
and out of the core of Central Civiliza-
tion. While the Nile Valley jitters between
core
and semiperiphery during the Turco-Islam-
ic
dynasties, India, semiperipheralized by the
Muslim
conquest, makes a bid for core status
under
the Mughals; both Egypt and India re-
enter
the semiperiphery during the Western
empires,
and remain there today after the
Western
retrenchment -- as do Mesopotamia and
Anatolia.
To return to the eastward march of Central
civilization:
European military-economic-
political
penetration and rivalries bring
southeast
Asia (both the continental portion,
which
is prised from Far Eastern civilization,
and the
autonomous Indonesian civilization)
into
the Central semiperiphery in the 16th-
18th
centuries; there it still remains. The
Manchu
empire, Japan
and
Korea -- the rest of Far Eastern, and all
of
Japanese, civilizations -- enter Central
civilization's
semiperiphery in the 19th
and/or
20th centuries, somewhere between the
Opium
Wars and World War I, and immediately
begin
to struggle for core status. Japan
attains
core status in a military sense 1905-
1918,
loses it in 1945, regains it economical-
ly from
the 1970's, militarily sometime in the
1980's. China probably achieved core status
in the
1970's, and has probably not yet lost
it. (In the last map, I have however excluded
the
non-Han, poor and near-empty west of
"China"
from core status on the ground that
contemporary
"China" is a multinational em-
pire.)
The northeastward expansion of Central
civilization. The expansion of Central civi-
lization
along a "northeastward" axis begins
from
Ecbatana/Hamadan and Rayy. Next come
Hecatompylus/Damghan,
Merv and Bactra/Balkh;
Bactria
(the state) may even have been a core
state,
but the Yue-Chi, Kushans, White Huns
and
Turks in Bactria (the territory) were
certainly
at best semiperipheral.
A debate exists over whether Central Asia
ever
had civilizational autonomy; I incline to
see it
as always an extension of Central
civilization,
but one whose records of linkage
have
been peculiarly obscured by peripheral
counterinvasion
and destruction. Certainly no
later
than the Ummayads, the Central frontier
advances
to the Jaxartes; the Tahirids and
Samanids
may well have put Transoxania into
the
Central core, after which it jitters
between
core, semiperiphery and periphery,
tending
toward long-term decline, under Karak-
hanids,
Seljuks, Ghuzz, Karakhitai, Khwariz-
mians,
Mongol Khanates, Timurid Emirates and
Uzbeks.
The eastward extension of the Musco-
vite/Russian
frontier through Siberia, to the
Manchu
frontier, enveloping Kazakhs and Uzbeks
in
Central Asia, becomes the main expansive
force
of Central civilization in this "north-
easterly"
direction after the Uzbek conquest
of
Transoxania. Under Muscovite, Russian
and
Soviet
empires, Central and North Asia become
stably
semiperipheral, and mostly so remains
today,
though the Trans-Siberian corridor
seems
more genuinely "Russian," and so more
properly
"core" than most of the Asian USSR or
RSFSR;
again I have so indicated on the final
map in
the set.
The northward expansion of Central civili-
zation. In the 2nd millennium B.C. the Mit-
anni
and Assyria are Central civilization's
marchers;
Van and the Medes push the Central
frontier
northward into the Caucasus. Arme-
nia,
the Bosporan kingdom, Colchis, Lazica,
Iberia,
the Albani, the Abasgians are key
players
on the frontier, moving it northward
only
slightly over a long period. The
Khazars
move it
faster; Kievan Russia and its succes-
sors
complete the northward movement.
The northward movement of Central civiliza-
tion is
notable for its slow pace, and for the
degree
to which it is embodied less in imperi-
alist
conquests of peripheral territory by
core
states than in the formation of "reaction
states"
-- states formed by peripheral peoples
under
pressure from/in admiration of/to defend
against/to
imitate/to excel their civiliz-
ational
neighbors. The entry of the northward
semiperiphery
into the core of Central civili-
zation
comes late, with Russian participation
in the
great wars of the 18th century, but
Russia
remains in the core, except, perhaps,
between
the two World Wars of the 20th centu-
ry.
The northwestward expansion of Central
civilization. The Hittites are 2nd millennium
members,
first of the Mesopotamian civiliz-
ation's
semiperiphery, then of the Central
civilization's
core. Peripheral Phrygians and
Luvians
first force the civilization's fron-
tier
backward by invasion and conquest, then
form
reaction states and become members of the
Central
semiperiphery. Cimmerians push the
civilizational
frontier back. Lydians advance
it
again, definitively recruiting (or re-
recruiting)
the peoples of Aegean civilization
to
Central, first as semiperipherals.
Persians push the Central semiperiphery
into
Thrace. Epirus and Macedon remain
march-
ers for
a long time. Anabasis and Alexander
reflect
unsuccessful and successful bids for
core
status by the Greco-Macedonian semi-
peripheral
peoples on the Central northwest.
Rome
drives these peoples back to semi-
peripheral
status by the 2nd century BC; some
return
to the core in the 4th century AD, but
lose
that status again over the long period of
Islamic
(Arab/Turk) expansion to local hegemo-
ny. The Roman imperial frontiers from Britain
to
Thrace would then embody the next substan-
tial
forward movement of Central civili-
zation's
northwest frontier, after the Balkan
entry
in the 5th-4th centuries BC. The
Frankish
-- Ostrogothic -- Byzantine frontier
represents
the next main hesitation and jitter
in the
continual but discontinuous Central
expansion
northwestward. The missionary
advance
of Roman and Eastern Christianity
after
Charlemagne and Cyril, because it repre-
sents
enduring political linkage and not
simply
a change of worldviews, thereafter
roughly
marks the assimilation of eastern,
northern
and northwestern Europe into Central
civilization. States from this frontier
(Frankish,
Holy Roman, France, England, Aus-
tria,
Prussia/Germany, to a lesser degree
Holland,
Denmark, Sweden) enter the Central
core,
and by the 17th century largely consti-
tute
that core, though always sharing that
status
with some others, increasingly so in
the
late 20th century, when core wars perhaps
temporarily
semiperipheralized Northwest
Europe.
The westward expansion of Central civiliza-
tion. Phrygia and Lydia become the instru-
ments
by which Central civilization engulfs
Aegean
Civilization (by then Greek-dominated).
Phoenicians/Carthaginians
and westward-moving
Greeks
bring in the eastern, then the western
Mediterranean
(and the Atlantic at Cadiz) via
colonialism. Etruscans, then Latins/Romans,
become
reaction-state marchmen, as do Numid-
ians
and Mauretanians. Rome brings in the
rest of
Iberia by straightforward imperialism.
The
westward expansion then stops at the
Atlantic
for a millennium and a half.
Rome enters the Central core in the 3rd-2nd
centuries
BC, leaving it in the 4th-5th centu-
ries
AD. Iberia enters the core in the late
15th
century, leaves it in the 17th. Italy
returns
to core status during the Renaissance,
and
again via nationalistic and imperialist
wars in
the late 19th and early 20th century.
Today
the states of this western frontier seek
core
status, and Italy has perhaps regained it
once
more, via European integration.
Meanwhile Iberians, and then northwest
Europeans,
restarting the westward expansion,
extend
Central civilization to the New World
from
the late 15th century A.D., in the pro-
cess
reducing Mexican, Peruvian and Chibchan
civilizations
to semiperipheries of Central
civilization. European colonists carry the
Central
frontier with them beyond the civil-
izational
boundaries of the engulfed New World
civilizations:
the American frontier is closed
in the
late 19th century, the Canadian (and
Alaskan)
in the mid or late 20th. The Amazo-
nian
frontier has probably closed by 1990,
with
the recruitment of the remaining periph-
eral
tribes to semiperipheral subordination
and/or
resistance. America enters the Central
civilizational
core by World War I, Canada
after
World War II; the remainder of the far
western
(New World) frontier of Central civi-
lization
is still semiperipheral today.
The southwestward expansion of Central
civilization. The southwestern frontier of
Central
civilization remains not far from the
Nile
Valley, blocked by the Sahara, from the
mid-2nd
millennium B.C. to the mid-2nd millen-
nium
A.D. It is then extended by a politico-
economic-military
envelopment maneuver, the
seafaring
ventures along the West African
coast
by Portuguese, Dutch, French and British
members
of Central civilization, and by trans-
Saharan
military ventures by Moroccans, which
incorporate
the West African interior (includ-
ing the
West African civilization) into Cen-
tral
civilization. This encirclement means
that
the final "southwestward" penetration of
Africa
is carried out by forces moving east-
ward,
and by local opponents forming reaction
states
in response to pressure from their
west. The southwestward expansion of Central
civilization
was completed not later than the
19th
century; thus far no areas so penetrated
have
entered the Central core.
The southward expansion of Central civili-
zation. Nubia is brought into Central civili-
zation
by Egyptians in the late 2nd millennium
B.C.,
and is succeeded in the next millennium
by
Meroe as the south-march (or simply moves
its
capital upstream from Napata to Meroe?).
Axum/Abyssinia
takes that marcher role in the
first
half of the first millennium A.D.,
carrying
Central civilization's frontier to
Eritrea
and then to Ethiopian plateau. Of
these
territories, only Napata ever enters the
Central
core, briefly, under Pi'ankhi (late
8th
century BC), before the XXV Dynasty ("Eth-
iopian")
moves its capital to Thebes.
Beyond Axum, the southward expansion of
Central
civilization quinquefurcates, with
different
stories for each of the following
areas:
Ethiopia, Nubia, Sudan, East Africa,
Central
Africa.
Southward expansion: Ethiopia. The Arab
conquest
in the 7th century broke Axum's land
and sea
connections to the Byzantine empire.
The
Ethiopian link to Central civilization was
however
maintained -- oppositionally, via
Muslim
states. The Arab conquests were fol-
lowed
by a continued semiperipherality of the
conquered
regions, some of which may have
become
peripheral. Ethiopia was kept connect-
ed to
Central civilization (1) through Muslim
attacks
in the 13th-16th centuries, (2)
through
Portuguese and Spanish connections in
the
16th-17th centuries, and (3) through
British
and Italian connections in the 19th
and
20th centuries, and remains today in the
Central
semiperiphery.
Southward expansion: Nubia. The outermost
Nubian
area may have been lost to Central
civilization
(through deurbanization) when
Meroe
was destroyed by Ethiopians in the 4th
century,
and its people moved westward; but a
post-Meroitic
Nubian civilized area continued
downriver
near Dongola, linked to Ethiopia and
therefore
a part of Central civilization.
Islamized
Egypt maintained this Nubia's Cen-
tral
connection through repeated invasions
after
the 7th century, infiltration and con-
version
in the 13th-15th century, Funj rule in
the
16th-18th centuries, and Egyptian and
British
conquests in the 19th century. Con-
temporary
struggles in the state of Sudan
represent
the pressure of the Arabized north-
ern
semiperipheral peoples upon the once
peripheral
tribal peoples of the south, who
are
thereby recruited into the Central semi-
periphery.
Southward expansion: Sudan. Sudanic states
-- from
Funj through Kordofan, Darfur, Wadai,
Bagirmi,
Kanem, Bornu, to the westerly marches
of the
Hausa states -- arose as a result of
westward
penetration from Nubia by Arab trad-
ers and
Islam, and in chain reaction, as an
extension
(from Nubia) of Central civiliza-
tion. The 19th century European conquests
simply
enlarged and redirected the connections
of the
Sudanic area with Central civilization.
Southward expansion: East Africa. Arab-
Islamic
penetration established city-states,
outposts
of the states system of Central
civilization,
at Mogadisho (contemporary
Somalia,
c. 900), Malindi (Kenya, 10th centu-
ry),
Mombasa (Kenya, 8th century -- ivory,
slaves),
Pate (Kenya), Kilwa Kisiwani (Tanza-
nia, by
1200 -- gold, ivory, skins), Sofala
(Mozambique
after 1000 -- gold, ivory), Cuama
(Mozambique,
after 1000), Inhambane (Mozam-
bique,
after 1000 -- slaves, ivory). Inland,
over
against the coastal colonies, reaction
states
formed, e.g., Monomatapa/Mwanamutapa
vis-a-vis
Sofala c. 1420, and before it, from
the
11th century, Great Zimbabwe. Thus
civi-
lization
in East Africa constituted a semi-
periphery
of Central civilization well before
the
16th century imperialist expansions of the
Central
states Portugal and Oman rendered East
African
territories provinces of Central
civilization's
semiperipheral states.
Southward expansion: Central Africa. State
formation
was brought to Central Africa by the
Cwezi
states (in current Uganda) not later
than
the 14th century, and continued by their
Bito
successors (Buganda-Bunyoro-Ankole) from
around
1500, the Kongo state (in current
Angola)
in the 14th century, Tutsi states
(Rwanda
and Burundi) in the 15th, Ndongo
(Angola)
by the 16th, Luba and Lunda States
(Zaire)
in the 16th, the Kuba kingdom of the
Shongo
(Zaire) from the early 17th century.
The two
extremes (Uganda and Angola) began
independently
of each other; they were linked
up
slowly over the next three centuries into a
Central
African constellation whose states
were
independent until provincialized through
Portuguese
(15th century onward), then Zanzi-
bari,
British and Belgian (19th century)
penetration. When and where urbanization,
therefore
civilization, occurred among the
Central
African states, it occurred as a
reaction,
not only to their penetration by
Central-civilization
traders, but to the
colonial
plantation of trading posts, mission
stations
and city-states on the west and east
coasts
-- and then to one another's citifica-
tion. The urbanization of Central Africa
accordingly
constituted a long and tenuous
extension
of Central civilization's semiper-
iphery,
and the territories thus recruited to
the
semiperiphery have remained there, as
states,
then as imperial colonies or provinc-
es, now
once again as states.
The "career" of Central
civilization's
core. As Central civilization expanded, in
all
directions, at varying paces, the newly
recruited
areas generally entered its semiper-
iphery,
where most have remained. Still, the
core of
Central civilization has certainly
both
expanded and shifted over time. In the
Near
Eastern phase the core was at first the
line of
cities along the Fertile Crescent and
the
Nile Valley; over time, the core expanded,
mostly
westward into the Mediterranean litto-
ral, to
Asia Minor and to Greece. During the
Greco-Roman
phase the core area expanded to
include
Italy, and shifted westward from
Mesopotamia. During the Medieval phase the
core
area once again included Mesopotamia; the
core
shifted eastward again toward Thrace,
Anatolia,
Egypt, Syria, Iraq. Italy went out
with
the decline of Rome and returned to the
core
with the rise of Venice and other cities
of
Northern Italy. During the Western
phase
the
whole core of Central civilization shifted
north
and west to France, Spain, the Low
Countries,
Germany, Britain. In the global
phase
the core seems to have expanded greatly,
to
include America and Russia, and probably
Japan. Plausible current candidates for
future
core status include India and China;
Russia
(as USSR) shows distinct signs of
strain
and potential breakup and dropout, but
still
remains a core state. Many short-term
fluctuations
and local attainments, disasters
and
controversies are necessarily passed over
in
these abbreviated descriptions, which
however
give the general picture of core
enlargement/contraction
and shift in language
comparable
to that employed for the other
thirteen
civilizations already described.
There is plenty of work to be done debating
the
dimensions of civilizational movement and
mapping
core shifts; but it seems beyond much
dispute
that Central civilization has expanded
in
space; its core area has expanded in space;
its
semiperiphery has also expanded in space;
its
core has shifted over space, with old core
areas
declining into the semiperiphery and new
core
areas rising out of same.
These propositions are illustrated in
Figures
3 through 11:
Central
civilization in 825 BC, 375 BC, 145
BC, AD
737, 1028, 1212, 1478, 1600, and to-
day.
Core
Theoretics
The
political form of a civilizational core.
A
civilization's core may have any of several
political
forms. It may be a single state, as
in:
Mesopotamian civilization, perhaps, during
the
(perhaps legendary) 1st Uruk dynasty, c.
2850-2600?;
Aegean, perhaps, during the main-
land
period (Mycenae); Indic during the Maurya
rise
and fall and the Kushana, Gupta and
Kanauj
empires; Mexican, perhaps during Oaxa-
can,
Tiahuanaco and Toltec hegemonies and the
rise of
the Aztecs; Peruvian, perhaps during
Chavin,
surely during the rise of the Incas;
Indonesian,
perhaps in the 2nd (Ko-ying),
surely
in the 15th century (Malacca) and
during
the rise and fall of Srivijaya and
Madjapahit;
Far Eastern in late T'ang and
northern
Sung, and during the rise of Ch'in,
the
fall of Han, the rise of Sui and of the
Mongols;
Japanese during Azuchi-Momoyama;
Central
during the rise and fall of Assyria,
the
rise of Media and Persia and Rome, and the
era of
Justinian.
The core may contain several several
states,
successively hegemonic: in Mesopota-
mian
civilization, the Sumerian core c. 2500-
2360
(Ur, Lagash, Umma). It may constitute
several
states simultaneously balanced, as in:
Egyptian
during the Intermediate periods;
Mesopotamian
during the Gutian and Isin-Larsa
eras;
Aegean during the Anatolian period;
Indic
between the major empires; Irish throug-
hout --
or at least between hegemonic high
kings;
"Olmec" Mexican; Huari-Tiahuanaco
Peruvian;
Chibchan; Indonesian in the 3rd-4th,
7th and
13th century intervals between ascend-
ancies;
West African between universal states;
Far
Eastern in the chaotic Eastern Chou, the
Han-Sui
interval, and the Ch'in-Southern Sung
period;
Japanese during the late Ashikaga
chaos;
Central between universal empires, and
for
most of the time since the Roman empire's
fracturing.
The core may be the metropolitan region of
a
universal state: Egyptian during the
king-
doms;
Mesopotamian during the empires of
Agade,
3rd dynasty Ur, and Babylon; perhaps
Aegean,
during the Cretan period; Indic during
the
Maurya empire: Indonesian during the
Srivijaya
and Madjapahit peaks; West African
during
the Ghana, Mali and Songhai peaks; Far
Eastern
during the Western Chou, Later Han,
Sui-early
T'ang, and Mongol-Ming-Manchu peri-
ods;
Japanese in the Nara, Heian and Tokugawa
periods;
Central during the Assyrian, Persian-
Macedonian
and Roman empires. Or the civili-
zational
core may be a functionally divided
set of
areas in a universal state, as in Far
Eastern
civilization in the Ch'in-Former Han
and
Japanese civilization during the Kamakura
period.
The most frequent core forms are: the
single
dominant or hegemonic state; several
competing
states; and the universal-empire
metropole.
Pulsation of cores. Core areas enlarge and
contract. The Egyptian core included part of
the
Nile valley, then the whole (Dynasties VI-
VIII),
then part, then all (Dynasties XIII-
XVII),
then part. The Indic core contracted
under
the Mauryas, Kushanas, Guptas and Hars-
ha, and
reexpanded after the fall of each.
The
Mexican core expanded between, but con-
tracted
during the Teotihuacan, Toltec and
Aztec
eras; the Peruvian behaved similarly
between
and during Chavin, Tiahuanaco-Huari,
and
Inca horizons, the Indonesian between and
during
Ko-ying, Ho-lo-tan, Kan-to-li, Srivija-
ya, and
Madjapahit-Malacca eras. The Missis-
sippian
core expanded from Adena to Hopewell,
contracted
from Hopewell to Temple Mound. The
Far
Eastern core expanded in the Three King-
doms
period. The Japanese core expanded in
Kamakura
and Ashikaga periods, contracted
during
Azuchi-Momoyama and Tokugawa. Central
civilization's
core shifts -- westward in the
Greco-Roman
phase, eastward in the Medieval
phase,
westward again in the Western phase --
involved
expansion at one edge synchronic with
contraction
at the other; the global phase saw
core
expansion east and west. Contractions
are
naturally enough associated with hegemonic
struggles
and universal-state periods, expan-
sions
with all-core epochs; but not perfectly.
Are semiperipheries necessary? Apparently
not,
since civilizations are often all-
core/no-core,
i.e. lack a semiperiphery.
Egyptian
civilization had a semiperiphery
during
the Kingdoms, did not during the Inter-
mediate
periods; Indic did during the empires,
not
between. Mesopotamian civilization
seems
always
to have had a semiperiphery, Aegean
likewise;
Irish never did. Mexican civiliza-
tion
had no discernible semiperiphery in the
intervals
between the Teotihuacan, Toltec and
Aztec
ascendancies, nor did Peruvian in its
Intermediate
periods between Horizons. Chib-
chan
may have developed a semiperiphery in
Cundirramarca. Indonesian civilization proba-
bly had
none between the Sumatran, Javan and
Malaysian
ascendancies, and probably did
during
those ascendancies. West African
civilization
probably always had a semi-
periphery;
Mississippian did at least during
Hopewell
and Temple Mound. Far Eastern civi-
lization
almost always had one, with Eastern
Chou
and the Han-Sui interregnum notable
exceptions. Japanese civilization usually had
a semiperiphery,
with the Ashikaga period
likely
the exception. Central civilization
has
always had a significant semiperipheral
area.
Semiperipheries exist more often than not,
particularly
in universal-empire periods when
the
metropole is especially favored, but they
do not
seem necessary features of a civiliza-
tion:
power, wealth, creativity can all be
rather
widely dispersed, though dispersal
usually
alternates with concentration.
Directionality of core shift. Cores may
move in
a single general direction, or oscil-
late. The Egyptian core shuttled between
north
and south, the Mesopotamian between
Sumer
and Akkad. The Aegean core moved north,
then
east; the Indic core shuttled between
west
and east, though with an eastward incli-
nation. The Mexican core moved south, then
partway
north again; so did the Peruvian. The
Indonesian
core oscillated between Sumatra and
Java
and then to Malaya. The West African
core
drifted eastward with a few half-moves
back,
the Mississippian core drifted westward,
the
Japanese eastward. The Central core
half-
moved
west, then east, then drifted west and
north. No significant patterns are evident.
Reversibility of core decline. Does past
experience
as a core preclude or assure return
to core
status? Apparently neither. Let us
first
take note of, and then set aside all the
apparent
civilizational-startup first-time
cores:
the Egyptian south in first unifica-
tion;
Mesopotamian Sumer in the 4th millennium
BC;
Aegean Crete; Indus basin at the beginning
of
Indic civilization; all Ireland; Mexican's
"Olmec"
Gulf and Basin zones; the Peruvian
Initial
Ceramic complexes; Chibchan Boyaca;
Indonesian
Sumatra (Ko-ying period); West
African
Kumbi Saleh; Mississippian (Adena)
Ohio;
Far Eastern (Shang) Yellow River valley;
Japanese
Nara; Central civilization's Fertile
Crescent
+ Nile valley.
There are many cases in which a semi-
peripheral
area, never before a core, rose to
core
status: the Egyptian North in the Old
Kingdom;
Mesopotamian Akkad in the Kish peri-
od;
Aegean Greece and Anatolia; Indic (Maurya)
Patna,
(Kushana) Peshawar, (Harshan) Kanauj;
Mexican
(Zapotec) Oaxaca; Peruvian (Early
Horizon)
Chavin, and then (Early Intermediate)
most
coastal and highland sites; Chibchan
Cundirramarca;
Indonesian (Ho-lo-tan) Java,
(Malaccan)
Malaya; West African (Malian)
Timbuktu,
perhaps Songhai Gao; Mississippian
(Hopewell)
Illinois; Far Eastern (Western
Chou)
Wei valley; Japanese (Heian) Kyoto,
(Bakufu)
Kamakura, and several Ashikaga cen-
ters. In Central civilization, such first-
time
core entrants included Assyria, Persia,
Greece
(previously, however, an Aegean core),
Macedonia,
Rome, Byzantium, Western Europe,
America,
Russia.
But there are several other cases in which
a
fallen core area has returned from semi-
peripheral
status, or has regained a solitude
it had
lost to upstart sharers. In Egyptian
civilization:
the south in dynasties XI and
XVIII,
the north in XII. In Mesopotamian
civilization:
Sumer/Uruk in the Early Dynastic
c.
2850-2600; Sumer and Akkad alternatively
2500-1500. In Indic civilization: Patna under
the
Guptas. In Mexican civilization: the
Basin
during Teotihuacan, Toltec and Aztec
periods. In Peruvian civilization: Cajamarca
and
Pachacamac in the Late Intermediate, after
their
eclipse by Huari in the Middle Horizon;
Late
Intermediate Chimu (replacing Early
Intermediate
Moche) after the Huari coreship.
In
Indonesian civilization: Sumatra during
Kan-to-li
and Srivijaya; Java during Madjapah-
it. In Far Eastern civilization: the Wei
valley
under Ch'in. In Central civilization:
Abbasid
Mesopotamia, and the classic renais-
sance
of Renaissance Italy.
In the transition from semiperiphery to
core,
history seems somewhat more favorable to
naissance
than to renaissance, but renaissan-
ces do
happen.
Within-core differentiation. Different
areas
may serve as military-political, econom-
ic, and
cultural-religious cores, and core
shifts
may occur in these features at differ-
ent
times. The Norse cities were Ireland's
economic
core, the monasteries its cultural
core,
the Kingly seats the politico-military
core:
result, an all-core civilization.
Chavin
may have been only Peru's cultural
center;
Tiahuanaco may have been only a cul-
tural,
Huari only a military core. The Far
Eastern
politico-military core long tended to
be
north and west of the economic-demographic-
cultural
core. The Japanese religious, polit-
ico-military
and economic cores drifted apart
in
Kamakura and Ashikaga and were reunited in
Tokugawa
days. The most notable discrepancies
between
Central civilization's economic-tech-
nical
and politico-military cores are attested
by
being corrected: the shift from Rome to
Constantinople,
the Renaissance-ending inva-
sions
of Italy, the revolt of the Netherlands,
the
involvement of British finance and fleets
in
Continental wars, and the American entry
into
the World Wars of the 20th century.
There
is thus some tendency for geographically
separated
functions to be pulled together; the
political-military
core may conquer the others
(the
post-Renaissance invasions of Italy),
migrate
to them (by a movement of the capital,
e.g.,
to Constantinople or Lo-yang) or usurp
them
(by taxation and subsidy, e.g., Tokugawa
Edo);
or economic cores may invest in politi-
co-military
potency (Dutch, British, Ameri-
cans).
Critique
of Core-periphery Theory
In the
search for a core-periphery theory,
principally
a theory of core motion and
change,
we do not start entirely afresh. Two
workers
of note, the civilizationist Carroll
Quigley
and the world-systems analyst Immanuel
Wallerstein,
have elaborated definite proposi-
tions
about "cores." Their
terminologies
differ
from that employed here; their proposi-
tions
are nonetheless of interest.
Quigley on core and periphery. Quigley's
spatial
account of civilizations contains the
following
major propositions bearing on core-
periphery
issues. (1) Civilizations general-
ly
arise on the periphery of previous civili-
zations,
out of cultural mixture. (Quigley,
1961:
78-80.) (2) Since every new civiliza-
tion
has an instrument of expansion, such that
within
it "inventions begin to be made, sur-
plus
begins to be accumulated, and this sur-
plus
begins to be used to utilize new inven-
tions," civilizations have early (and some-
times
recurring) stages of expansion -- of
production,
living standards, population, and
--
through colonization -- of territory.
The
expansion
process is one half of the major
civilizational
dynamic. (1961: 80-81.) (3)
Expansion
produces partition. "As a result
of
the
geographic expansion of the society, it
comes
to be divided into two areas: the core
area,
which the civilization occupied [origi-
nally],
and the peripheral area into which it
expanded
during [its stage of expansion]"
(1961: 81-82.).
Here is our first termino-
logical
difference: I would agree that civili-
zations
expand into their periphery, but would
then
restyle the area expanded into as "semi-
periphery." This term, of which so far as I
know
Quigley is the originator, he twice
employs
(1961:85); but more often he speaks of
"more
peripheral" and "less peripheral" areas
(1966:85-87). (4)
All civilizational
instruments
of expansion tend to become cor-
rupted,
"institutionalized," non-expansive.
The
slowdown of expansion is the other half of
the
major dynamic of civilizational change.
(5) The slowdown of expansion is geographi-
cally
partitioned. "When expansion
begins to
slow up
in the core areas, as a result of the
instrument
of expansion becoming institution-
alized,
and the core area becomes increasingly
static
and legalistic, the peripheral areas
continue
to expand...." Furthermore, as
latecomers
they can often imitate core suc-
cesses
while avoiding time-wasting blind
alleys
explored by core innovators; so the
"peripheral
areas...frequently short-cut many
of the
developments experienced by the core
area. As a result, by the latter half of [the
civilization's
stage of expansion], the pe-
ripheral
areas are tending to become wealthier
and
more powerful than the core areas.
Anoth-
er way
of saying this is that the core area
tends
to pass from [a stage of expansion] to
[a
stage of crisis and conflict] earlier than
do the
peripheral areas." (1961: 81-82.) (6)
The
slowdown of expansion produces, among
other
effects, tension and class conflict.
(7)
Because the crisis of expansion is
geographically
partitioned, it is particularly
acute
in the civilization's core area. (8)
The
crisis of expansion also produces imperi-
alist
wars intended to continue the local
expansion
of parts of the civilization, now at
the
expense of other parts. (9) The core
suffers
these wars first. (10) The imperial-
ist
wars lead to conquests that reduce the
number
of states in the civilization, eventu-
ally to
one. (11) The core is unified first:
a core
empire precedes a universal empire.
(1961:
82-85). (12) "In the imperialist wars
of [the
stage of conflict] of a civilization
the
more peripheral states are consistently
victorious
over less peripheral states." Core
empires
are created by semiperipheral states,
universal
empires by fully peripheral states
(1961:
85). Quigley's terminology is such that
power
for him can move, leaving the core
behind;
I would speak of the same phenomenon
as the
movement of the core into formerly
semiperipheral
areas.
(13)
What are the reasons for the habitual
victory
of more peripheral states over less
peripheral
states during the stage of conflict
of any
civilization? One is the general rule
that
"material culture diffuses more easily
than
nonmaterial culture, so that peripheral
areas
tend to become more materialistic than
less
peripheral areas; while the latter spend
much of
their time, wealth, energy, and atten-
tion on
religion, philosophy, art, or litera-
ture,
the former spend a much greater propor-
tion of
these resources on military, politi-
cal,
and economic matters. Therefore,
periph-
eral areas
are more likely to win victories"
(1961:
86-87). (14) A second reason "arises
from
the fact that the process of evolution is
slightly
earlier in more central areas than in
peripheral
ones," so that while more peripher-
al
areas are still in a stage of expansion,
more
central ones, in a later stage of devel-
opment,
"are more harassed by class conflicts
and are
more paralyzed by the inertia and
obstruction
of institutions," and generally
have
undergone and been weakened by a longer
period
of imperialist wars.
Wallerstein on core and periphery. Immanu-
el
Wallerstein presents a distinctive idea of
core
and periphery. Cores and peripheries
are
features
of multistate capitalist politico-
economic
structures ("world-economies") rather
than of
past one-state "world-empires," in
that a
world-economy has a geographical as
well as
a functional division of labor.
"World-economies...are
divided into core
states
and peripheral areas." Core states
are
advantaged,
have weak or nonexistent indige-
nous
states (1974: 349). Core and periphery
are
features of capitalism: "world-empires had
joined
their 'edges' to the center by the
collection
of tribute, otherwise leaving
relatively
intact the production systems over
which
they had 'suzerainty', whereas the
capitalist
world-economy 'peripheralized'
areas
economically by incorporating them into
the
division of labor." (Hopkins,
Wallerstein
et al.,
1982: 55.)
Why is there regional polarization in
capitalist
world-economies? Wallerstein's
various
answers include definitional or func-
tional
requisiteness, geoeconomic regionalism
(core-likeness)
and force (unequal exchange).
1. Requisiteness. "[W]ithin a capitalist
world-economy,
all states cannot 'develop'
simultaneously
by definition, since the system
functions
by virtue of having unequal core and
peripheral
regions." (Wallerstein, 1975: 23.)
2. Geography.
Production processes are
linked
in complex commodity chains (1983: 16).
These
chains have a directionality, raw-to-
finished. Commodity chains have been geo-
graphically
convergent: "they have tended to
move
from the peripheries of the capitalist
world-economy
to the centres or cores" (1983:
30). The more easily monopolized processes
are
concentrated in core areas, the less
skilled,
more extensive manpower processes in
"peripheral"
areas (1984: 4-5). What "makes a
production
process core-like or periphery-like
is the
degree to which it incorporates labor-
value,
is mechanized, and is highly profit-
able"
(1984: 16). There are core states and
periphery
states because there "tend to be
geographical
localizations of productive
activities
such that core-like production
activities
and periphery-like production
activities
tend each to be spatially grouped
together"
(1984: 15). 3. Unequal exchange.
"The
exchange of products containing unequal
amounts
of social labor we may call the core-
periphery
relationship" (1984: 15). There is
a
parallel political polarization between
strong
core states and weaker peripheral
states,
"the 'political' process of 'imperial-
ism'
being what makes possible the 'economic'
process
of 'unequal exchange'" (1984:5).
Unequal
exchange "means, ultimately, the
transfer
of some of the surplus of any one
area to
a receiver of surplus in another" as
"consequence
of the fact that more labor power
has
gone into producing the value exchanged in
one
area than in the other." (1982: 94)
Unequal
exchange exists when commodities
moving
one way incarnate more "real input
(cost)"
than equally-priced commodities moving
the
other way (1983: 31). Unequal exchange
existed
pre-capitalism when one party to a
market
transaction used force to improve his
price
(1983: 30-31). Core zones are those
which
gain profit or surplus by unequal-ex-
change
transactions (1983: 31-32). In capi-
talism,
unequal exchange has been concealed by
the
fact that commodity chains cross state
frontiers
(1983: 31). Strong core state-
machines
keep peripheral state-structures
weaker,
their economies lower on the commodity
chain,
their wage-rates lower (1983: 32).
This is
done by force -- wars and coloniza-
tion --
when there are significant political
challenges
to existing inequalities, otherwise
by
market supply-and-demand with an enormous
apparatus
of force latent (1983: 32-33).
While in Quigley's terminology a semi-
periphery
is geographically intermediate
between
fully peripheral areas and the core
(and
thereby advantaged against the core in
empire-building,
but disadvantaged against the
periphery),
in Wallerstein's terms a semi-
periphery
is intermediate in other senses,
especially
the economic. "There always exist
semiperipheral
zones" (1984: 15). Seim-
peripheral
states "function as loci of mixed
kinds
of production activities" (1984: 15),
have
enterprises engaged in both "corelike"
and
"peripheral" processes. In
moments of
expansion
of the world-economy, these states
"serve
to some extent as economic transmission
belts
and political agents" of some imperial
core
power. In periods of stagnation and
crisis,
core powers' hold on these states may
be
weakened; one or two, which are strong
enough,
may play among the rivals, erect new
quasi-monopolies,
displace some falling core
power,
and impose themselves as new core
powers
(1984: 7). Semiperipheral areas
"are
in
between the core and the periphery on a
series
of dimensions, such as the complexity
of
economic activities, strength of the state
machinery,
cultural integrity, etc. Some of
these
areas had been core areas of earlier
versions
of a given world-economy. Some had
been
peripheral areas that were later promot-
ed, so
to speak, as a result of the changing
geopolitics
of an expanding world-economy."
(1974:
349).
Quigleyan semiperipheries are contingent
products
of geographic expansion; Wallerstein-
ian
semiperipheries are necessary aspects of a
particular
politico-economic form. "The
semiperiphery
is a necessary structural ele-
ment in
a world-economy. These areas play a
role
parallel to that played, mutatis mutan-
dis, by
middle trading groups in an em-
pire....These
middle areas (like middle groups
in an
empire) partially deflect the political
pressures
which groups primarily located in
peripheral
areas might otherwise direct
against
core states and the groups which
operate
within and through their state machin-
eries."
(1974: 349-350) The middle stratum in
world-economies
consists of the semiperipheral
states.
(1979: 23) "The three structural
positions
in a world economy -- core, periph-
ery,
and semiperiphery -- had become stabi-
lized
by about 1640." (1979: 18)
In Wallerstein's theory, by contrast with
Quigley's,
cores move over time (1984: 103;
1974:
350; 1979: 33). New technologies render
different
commodities "high profit, high-wage"
at
different moments: "At first, wheat was
exchanged
against textiles; later textiles
against
steel; today steel against computers
and
wheat" (1984: 103).
Quigley vs. Wallerstein. Quigley seems
right
to treat cores and peripheries as fea-
tures
of all civilizations, not simply of
states-system
periods or capitalist instru-
ments
of expansion. Universal empires cer-
tainly
have metropolitan cores. Quigley also
seems
correct to treat core-semiperiphery-
periphery
as always having primarily a spatial
interpretation.
But Wallerstein seems right to assert that
cores
move in space over time; this can be
seem as
a different way of perceiving what is
implied
in Quigley's contention that at least
some
semiperipheral and peripheral states have
eventually
succeeded in conquering their
civilizations. If we adopt mobile-core lan-
guage,
Quigley's contention can then be trans-
lated
into the assertion that, simultaneously
as
states systems are displaced by universal
empires,
civilizational cores move long dis-
tances
onto latecomer territories, which, once
peripheral,
then incorporated into the semi-
periphery,
finally attain core status as the
imperial
metropole.
Quigley seems right again to treat core-
semiperiphery
distinctions as growing in the
first
instance from a fact about motion in
space
over time (rather than from the statics
of
"capitalism"), in that expansion of civili-
zations
in space over time necessarily means
that
some regions will enter a civilization
later
than others. Quigley's causal mecha-
nism,
geographic expansion over time, seems
sufficient
to account for the origin of core-
semiperiphery
distinctions.
Wallerstein's ideas again seem useful in
accounting
for the stability of core-periphery
distinctions,
over the time in which they do
remain
stable. Wallerstein's theory must
however
be generalized beyond capitalism and
states-systems,
since universal empires show
persistence
of their metropoles and capitals
at
century-plus timescales. The enormously
uneven
concentration of particular natural and
social
"endowments" (ores, soils, climates,
water;
ports, trade routes, crossroads, stron-
gpoints)
across the globe and each of its
regions
may combine with a prevalent technolo-
gy
(which renders such endowments "resources"
during
a particular epoch), with the inequali-
ty of
the distribution of human populations,
and
with the self-interested power of the core
states/imperial
metropoles to monopolize such
endowments,
to account for the long persis-
tence
of cores. But this needs comparative-
empirical
examination.
The views of Quigley and Wallerstein on the
question
of the balance of advantage in eco-
nomic
expansion seem to differ. Quigley sees
it as
lying with the latecomers (because of
delayed
corruption, developmental short-cuts,
and
preferential diffusion of material cul-
ture);
Wallerstein as clearly sees it lying
with
the core states (greater force, stronger
state-machines,
unequal exchange). However,
if we
accept that cores do move, but only
slowly,
and are stable for significant peri-
ods,
the apparent differences can be recon-
ciled:
Quigley's cited forces may operate at
longer
timescales than Wallerstein's, and in
the
opposite direction. The additional
vari-
ables
of technological stagnation (Quigley) or
change
(Wallerstein), at least if surprising
or
uncontrolled, and, more effectively and
inescapably,
core wars (Quigley), may help to
account
for core declines. Again comparative-
historical
study seems called for.
It is not clear that the Wallersteinian
concept
of "unequal" exchange is viable as a
description
-- it seems to entail some variant
of the
problematic labor theory of value -- or
as an
explanation -- it seems to conflate
force,
which would plausibly explain involun-
tary
transfers of surplus, with technological
inequality,
which would plausibly explain
voluntary
exchanges of high-labor-output for
low-input
commodities. The degree to which
goods trans-ports
are characterized by either
vs.
both those mechanisms would seem to be an
intriguing
but empirical question. Once we
accept
that world systems as such -- not just
capitalist
world-economies -- have cores, it
would
seem to make sense that it is the polit-
ico-military
predominance of the core that
accounts
for the core's ability to drain the
semiperiphery:
loot, tribute, taxes, price
controls,
confiscations, trade route closures,
and
enforced monopolies are politico-military
ventures,
though for economic objectives. At
the
same time, it also seems clear that urban-
ization,
and eventually core status, has
tended
to move slowly toward major semi-
peripheral
supply sources, whose local popula-
tions
have then perhaps managed to extract
maximum
monopolistic advantage by establishing
political
control over their commodities'
flows
and prices; why they should be able to
do so,
and at what time scales, remain to be
explored
by students of the political manipu-
lation
of economic exchange. Again we need
comparative
studies, of core drainage and
semiperipheral
resistance.
From semiperiphery to universal
empire? In
support
of his proposition that universal
empires
are commonly the product of peripheral
(in our
terms, semiperipheral) states, Quigley
offers
numerous cases. While some of these do
not
conform to our criteria because they
involve
only one culture-area within a larger
(i.e.
Central) civilization, seven of Quig-
ley's
cases seem to offer support for his
proposition
even within our civilizational
definitions.
These seven cases are as follows. (1)
Mesopotamian
civilization: old core states
like
Uruk, Kish, Ur, Nippur, and Lagash were
conquered
by (preserving Quigley's terms) more
peripheral
states like Agade and Babylon,
these
by more peripheral Assyria, and the
whole
of western Asia by fully peripheral
Persia. (2)
In Minoan (Aegean) civilization
the
core area of Crete itself seems to have
been
conquered by peripheral Mycenae.
(3) In
Classical
civilization (for us, in Central
civilization,
which is larger than "Classi-
cal"),
peripheral Macedonia and more peripher-
al Rome
rise to empire. (4) In Mesoamerica
the
Mayan core (seen by Quigley) is overcome
by the
semiperipheral Toltecs and these, in
turn,
by the fully peripheral Aztecs. (5) In
the
Andes, the coastal and northern highlands
core
are submerged by several more peripheral
cultures,
notably Tiahuanaco from the southern
highlands,
and the whole Andean civilization
was
conquered by the "fully peripheral" Incas
from
the "forbidding" central highlands.
(6)
In Far
Eastern civilization, which Quigley
divides
into Sinic and Chinese, Chou, Ch'in
and Han
are seen as semiperipheral or periph-
eral
conquerors of the Huang Ho core, Mongols
as
remote, Ming and Manchu as peripheral.
(7)
In
Indic civilization, divided by Quigley into
Indic
and Hindu, Harappa is suggested as a
peripheral
Punjab conqueror of a lower-valley
(Sind)
Chandu-Daro core, while Maurya is
acknowledged
a "local," i.e. core, dynasty.
(1961:85-86.)
Do these cases represent a general rule?
If so,
what? If we attend to the conquering
peoples
rather than their base areas, it does
seem
that many of those cited by Quigley were,
a few
centuries before their conquests, pe-
ripheral
or semiperipheral to the civilization
they
ultimately united, while peoples they
conquered
in their careers of empire were
already
in the core. Mycenae, Macedonia,
Rome,
Toltecs, Aztecs, Chou, Ch'in, Han,
Mongols,
perhaps Ming, Manchus, all seem to
fit
this mold. If we rephrase Quigley's
proposition
accordingly -- the conquering
peoples
of universal empires are in general
recently
promoted from semiperiphery and
periphery
rather than veteran or renascent
members
of the core -- is it correct?
In Egypt: for the Old Kingdom, uncertain;
for the
Middle Kingdom, false; for the New
Kingdom,
false. In Mesopotamia: for Agade,
uncertain;
for Ur, false; for Babylon, uncer-
tain. In Aegean: for Minoan, uncertain,
probably
not applicable; there seems not to
have
been a Mycenean universal empire, but if
there
had been, true for that. In Indic: for
Harappa,
uncertain; for Maurya, uncertain. In
Mexican:
if there had been a Toltec universal
empire,
true for that; for the Aztec universal
empire,
true. In Peruvian: if there had been
either
a Huari or a Tiahuanaco universal
empire,
true for it; for the Inca universal
empire,
true. Indonesian: for Srivijaya and
Madjapahit,
uncertain. West African: for
Ghana,
uncertain; for Mali, true; for Songhai,
true. Far Eastern: for Ch'in-Han, true; for
Sui-T'ang,
true; for Mongol-Min-Manchu, true.
Japanese:
for Yamato uncertain; for Hideyoshi-
Tokugawa
probably true, if we refer to "clans"
rather
than "peoples." Central: for
Assyrian,
true;
for Persian-Macedonian, true; for Roman,
true. If we were to speak of areas rather
than
peoples, the proposition would be false
for
Agade, Babylon and the Aztecs, Srivijaya
and
Madjapahit. It is often the case, then,
that
the builders of a civilization's univer-
sal
empire are relative latecomers, to its
network
and to its core; less often, but still
frequently,
they begin their empire-building
from a
more recently incorporated territory
than
those they ultimately conquer. Whatever
comparative
advantages recent recruits may
have in
the imperialist drama seem likely to
be both
conditional and complex.
CONCLUSION
Civilizational
cores may take any of several
political
forms, most frequently being: a
single
dominant or hegemonic state; several
competing
states; and the metropolitan region
of a
universal empire. Core areas expand and
contract,
the latter especially during hege-
monic
and universal-state epochs. Civiliza-
tions
usually have a semiperiphery, especially
during
such periods, but need not, and during
states-system
periods sometimes do not. Cores
may
move in a single prevailing direction, or
shuttle. Old cores return, and new areas
rise,
to core status; history shows no marked
favoritism
to either process. Different areas
may
serve a civilization as its political-
military,
economic and cultural cores, though
there
is some tendency for the functions to go
together
or to drift together when parted.
Recent
arrivals to core status have some
advantages
in competitions to destroy states
systems,
but they are not overwhelming nor
entirely
self-evident.
"Coreness" and
"semiperipherality" are
multidimensional
phenomena, but certainly have
politico-military,
economic, technological,
demographic,
religious and cultural compo-
nents. Politico-military driving variables
seem more
obvious and accessible to analysis
than
others, but are unlikely to function
alone. Forces need to be posited to explain
both
the motions and changes of cores --
formations,
expansions, pulsations, shuttles,
drifts,
evaporations -- and core persistence
and
stability.
Interesting speculative questions about
core-periphery
include: can an all-core/no-
core
global society evolve? Would it require
a
states system? Does the end of the
periph-
ery
increase the chances for an all-core/no-
core
society? or a freezing of current core-
semiperiphery
boundaries? or a speedup in core
shift?
or a narrowing of the core to a single
hegemonic
state or imperial metropole?
NOTES