Author: Janet L. Abu-Lughod

Translators: DU Xianbing (Associate Professor of IEC, TJNU), HE Meilan (Associate Researcher of Hebei Normal University), WU Yitian (PhD Candidate of Warwick University)

Publisher: The Commercial Press (February 2024)

ISBN：978710022668-4

Introduction:

In this important study, Abu Lughod presents a groundbreaking reinterpretation of global economic evolution, arguing that the modern world economy had its roots not in the sixteenth century, as is widely supposed, but in the thirteenth century economy a system far different from the European world system which emerged from it. Using the city as the working unit of analysis, Before European Hegemony provides a new paradigm for understanding the evolution of world systems by tracing the rise of a system that, at its peak in the opening decades of the 14th century, involved a vast region stretching between northwest Europe and China. Writing in a clear and lively style, Abu Lughod explores the reasons for the eventual decay of this system and the rise of European hegemony.