Cover -- Contents -- List of Tables and Figures -- About the Authors -- Preface -- One: The Rise and Fall of Great Powers -- Two: Eurasian C-Wave Crises in the First Millennium B.C. -- Three: From Harappa to Mesopotamia and Egypt to Mycenae: Dark Ages, Political-Economic Declines, and Environmental/Climatic Changes 2200 B.C.-700 B.C. -- Four: Power is in the Details: Administrative Technology and the Growth of Ancient Near Eastern Cores -- Five: Power and Size: Urbanization and Empire Formation in World-Systems Since the Bronze Age -- Six: Lamb, Rice, and Hegemonic Decline: The Mongol Empire in the Fourteenth Century -- Seven: The Rise of European Hegemony: The Political Economy of South Asia and Europe Compared, A.D. 1200-A.D. 1500 -- Eight: Contentious Peasants, Paternalist State, and Arrested Capitalism in China's Long Eighteenth Century -- Nine: Space, Matter, and Technology in Globalization of the Past and Future -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- W -- X -- Y -- Z.