The Mediterranean world sketched by Braudel and the world system across the Atlantic Ocean described by Wallerstein were nothing other than subsystems of the global system that encompassed Africa, the Mediterranean, the Islamic Middle East, India, China, and Southeast Asia.

ECONOMIST: The once and future boom

Influenced by the writings of Fernand Braudel and Immanuel Wallerstein (historians who helped establish a tradition of global comparative history), large numbers of Japanese intellectuals are beginning to realise that a global economic system existed in the areas around the Indian Ocean, the Arabic Sea, the South China Sea, and the East China Sea long before the westernisation of the world.

ECONOMIST: The once and future boom