The Modern World-System IV: Centrist Liberalism Triumphant, 1789–1914

The Modern World-System #4

by Immanuel Wallerstein

Immanuel Wallerstein’s highly influential, multi-volume opus, The Modern World-System, is one of this century’s greatest works of social science. An innovative, panoramic reinterpretation of global history, it traces the emergence and development of the modern world from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. This new volume encompasses the nineteenth century from the revolutionary era of 1789 to the First World War. In this crucial period, three great ideologies―conservatism, liberalism, and radicalism―emerged in response to the worldwide cultural transformation that came about when the French Revolution legitimized the sovereignty of the people. Wallerstein tells how capitalists, and Great Britain, brought relative order to the world and how liberalism triumphed as the dominant ideology.

Genres: History, Economics, Sociology, Nonfiction, Politics, World History, Academic

396 pages, Paperback

First published April 16, 2011

About the author

Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein was a scholar of politics, sociologist, historical social scientist, and world-systems analyst. His bimonthly commentaries on world affairs were syndicated.

Reviews

[sube · Rating 3 out of 5]

The last book of the unfinished series *The Modern World System* is the story of the emergence of "centrist liberalism", that is the institutionalisation of the liberal state, which was able to tame both conservatism and socialism with a program of reforms and co-option - which set in the long 19th century with the French Revolution, which made political change acceptable. Furthermore, it seeks to show that neither of the three afromentioned ideologies were antistatist, instead each is a political metastrategy in an environment where political change is accepted (p. 1). Liberalism was structured upon a liberal state, with an exclusionary citizen structure, which created its own science structure - based upon a fragmentary collection with a self-justificationary role.

It is, in my view, the least interesting book of the series - sadly, since it's also the most readable. It is not exactly mindbreaking or shattering, though it has some good comments on citizenship and how liberalism eroded some distinctions but absolutised others in the project of creating a majority in favour of centrism. Furthermore, the three-part structure of conservatism-liberalism-radicalism is a bit questionable, since it seems to me that conservatism in the book is both ascribed the view of traditionalism and particularism, but also conservative reformism; while radicalism only properly emerged as distinct from liberalism after the merger of conservatism-liberalism in a lot of Europe. I think this could have been handled better. A lot of book feels a bit irrelavent.

[Alex Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this latest installment of his amazing series, Wallerstein shows us how various contemporary institutions arose as a response to the sudden awareness the French Revolution engendered: that people could self rule.

From this point, the elites took over, commandeered the economic and political machinery and proceeded to institute laws in the name of equality. These laws/policies split populations into groups to divide them for state/technocractic management. We can thus understand the development of the modern state as the development of various fragmented knowledges (of technological/social institutional agency) in the name of the social body.

Wallerstein does not talk too much about technological development -- in fact this period of world history is THICK. He sticks mainly to institutional development as the development of the state ideology -- which it is his argument that this multifaceted approach to ideological interpellation has largely succeeded by this point. The elites rule the world. It is the triumph of the centrist liberal state to co-opt two other ideologies, progressivism and conservatism as arms pushing forth its own agenda for further globalization.

[Ajay · Rating 2 out of 5]

Less intriguing than volumes 1 - 3, rather than a primary concern with the economic evolution and history of nations, volume 4 turns it's attention to the realm of social and political revolution unleashed in the French Revolution.

Key topics are workers rights, communism, liberalism, free trade, women's rights, racial equality.

It was particularly insightful to analyze the evolution of the social sciences themselves. The mainstream view sees the birth of social science as a neutral, authoritative process. But Wallerstein pulls the curtain back to many of the economic, political, and ideological concerns that shaped the development of the field in the 19th century.

For example, the impact that racism and white supremacist theories played in promoting the mythology, culture, history, and virtue of Ancient Greece relative to Ancient Egypt and other African/Asian civilizations.

[Rob Prince · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're going to read this book - and I hope people do - suggest that, despite how tedious it might appear - that you start with Volume 1 and read through the entire series. Wallerstein is wonderful - gives a framework for understanding a fast moving world. His work has greatly helped me understand what seems to be the bizarre and often cruel changing world. Now the challenge is, to change it. That said - there is so much meat in this volume, but the latter sections on what it means to be "a citizen" and who within different national frameworks "qualifies" as such and who doesn't, is especially relevant in this America (where I happen to live) of Trumpty-Dumpty.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

Probably the weakest of the four, but still pretty good. It’s just that Wallerstein’s biggest flaw is his relative lack of categorical reflexivity—“geoculture”? come on man, what is that—and that becomes hard to ignore in a volume so heavily focused on ideology. His gloss of the relationship between feminist movements, Black liberation struggles, and the capitalist world-system around them left much to be desired, too. I kept wanting him to go deeper on how the dominant mode of production changed throughout the long nineteenth century, and how those changes tracked to the ideological developments he examines (mostly liberalism, but also socialism and conservatism), but I fear he isn’t beating the commercialist allegations here. In classic Wallerstein fashion, though, I’m left with a bunch of tidbits that I want to keep reading about; the handful of paragraphs about nineteenth century Germany’s Indology fetish made a lot click into place…

[Baris · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is a massively different from earlier books in Wallerstein's World System series. Instead of economic history, Wallerstein engages with the intellectual history of nineteenth-century era arguing that economically, the nineteenth century was more or less the continuation of the system, which he wrote in the earlier volumes. However, unfortunately this time, his study lacks focus, clarity and --the worst- originality.

[Rallie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic book. The first three chapters are relatively dense (especially if the reader does not already have a decent degree of familiarity with 18th-19th century history), but chapter four especially is fantastic. It may not be a book for the average reader as it is written for academic audiences.

[Bradley Farless · Rating 4 out of 5]

Informing

This isn't my usual area of study in history. That being said, I found the writing style to be clear and persuasive and it's certainly informing. Without having been exposed to other streams of thought regarding the subject, though, I can't speak on the strength of the arguments.

[Tim · Rating 2 out of 5]

The further that Wallerstein goes in his Modern World-System series (originally supposed to be a trilogy!), the more and more his logic falls apart. This may be the one academic work I've read where I would think that "tl;dr" would be a valid critique of the work.

[Juan Carlos]

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