9780143539070

0143539078

Part I. Western Maritime empires divide the world into a rich Western world and a poor Restern world

Reasons for the rise of the Western world in the centuries after 1500

Power configurations and the periodisation of Western empires (1500-2010)

Profiling Western marine empires and understanding their unique characteristics

Western empires and the dynamics of social and imperial power over the past 500 years

Western industrialisation and the Great Divergence between the West and the Rest (1820-1950)

Part II. The first pattern of Western Empires: empires of plunderers, slave traders and settlement colonialists 1530- 1830

The first period of deep systemic chaos: the Church in retreat, the yoke of feudalism breaks, two Europes

The systemic period of the Iberian and the Catholic empires 1530- 1630

The systemic period of the Dutch Empire 1648- 1713

The systemic period of the first British Empire 1713- 1883.

Part 111. The second pattern of Western empires: empires of exploitation and labour repression

The second period of deep systemic chaos: revolutionary upheavals against the ancién regime (1775-1820)

The systemic period of the second British Empire (1846-1914/31)

The origins of the third world during the second pattern of Western empires (1820-1945)

Part 1V. The third pattern of Western empires: the pernicious draining of the Restern world by multiple American-led empires after the Second World War

The third period of deep systemic chaos during the Thirty-One Years War (1914-1945)

Anti-systemic revolts against Western empires and decolonisation in the twentieth century

The multiple American post-colonial empires that inconspicuously disrupted, exploited and drained the Rest of the world after the Second World War

Part V. Capitalism and growing domestic inequalities during the past 500 years

Successive politico-economic systems and the almost uninterrupted dominanc of 'capitalisms' over 'democracies' since 1500.

Capitalism > History.

International finance > History.

Financial institutions, International > History.

Equality > History.

Imperialism > Religious aspects.