This thought-provoking monograph analyzes long- medium- and short-term global cycles of prosperity, recession, and depression, plotting them against centuries of important world events. Major research on economic and political cycles is integrated to clarify evolving relationships between the global center and its periphery as well as current worldwide economic upheavals and potential future developments. Central to this survey are successive waves of industrial and, later, technological and cybernetic progress, leading to the current era of globalization and the changes of the roles of both Western powers and former minors players, however that will lead to the formation of the world order without a hegemon. Additionally, the authors predict what they term the Great Convergence, the lessening of inequities between the global core and the rest of the world, including the wealth gap between First and Third World nations.

Among the topics in this ambitious volume:

· Why politics is often omitted from economic analysis.
· Why economic cycles are crucial to understanding the modern geopolitical landscape.
· How the aging of the developed world will affect world technological and economic future.

Provides a large-scale panorama of economic changes since the second half of the 18th century