challenges the assumption that the international political economy is a recent phenomenon. Instead this volume asserts that the current global political economy began to take shape around 1500 and that some of today's key processes were already perceivable several hundred years ago. The book explains the interdependence between long-term economic growth, global political leadership and global war and how this interdependence has evolved over the last 500 years, and includes discussion of: *the ascendence of Western Europe and the significance of the 1490s *the military superiority thesis *sequences of leadership and of challenge to the global political economy *the importance of commodities from sugar and cloth to slaves and bullion *the Anglo-American rivalry until the First World War.