World Accumulation, 1492-1789

Most of Andre Gunder Frank's early work on the

nature of underdevelopment focused on one continent: Latin America. Here

he broadened his canvas and traced the world-wide effects of the

process of capital accumulation from the period just prior to the

discovery of America to the industrial and French revolutions. It is

Frank's thesis that "the world has experienced a single all-embracing,

albeit unequal and uneven, process of capital accumulation centered in

Western Europe," which has been capitalist for at least two centuries.