The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000With 200,000 hardcover copies in print, this book has received worldwide attention. Kennedy explains how the various world powers have risen and fallen over the five centuries since the formation of the "new monarchies" in Western Europe. |
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First - although it is a somewhat pedantic matter - it is unlikely that the country ' s
gross national product ( GNP ) was ever the largest in the world during the
decades following 1815 . Given the sheer size of China ' s population ( and , later
...
Within another three decades — a short time indeed in the course of the Great
Power system — that same continent of Europe would be tearing itself apart and
several of its members would be close to collapse . Three decades further , and
the ...
To be sure , its rate of growth over those decades was unusually swift , because
of special conditions . Yet according to many assessments , 75 the Japanese
economy is still likely to expand about 1 % to 2 percent a year faster than the
other ...
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The rise and fall of the great powers: economic change and military conflict from 1500 to 2000
User Review - Not Available - Book VerdictYale historian Kennedy surveys the ebb and flow of power among the major states of Europe from the 16th centurywhen Europe's preeminence first took shapethrough and beyond the present erawhen great ... Read full review
Learning from History, July 19, 2003
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Kennedy chronicles the rise of the Great Powers starting with the Ming Dynasty in China and taking us all the way to the contemporary times of the 1980s.
By analyzing world history through the prisms of economical, political, and military status of each great rising power, Kennedy fuses a theory of why certain countries throughout history (1500-present) rose to be regional or world powers and why they later collapsed.
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As the other reviewers noted, Kennedy's book falls short of accurately predicting the changes that were to follow the publication date of his book (fall of Russia, Asian market crises). Nevertheless this book is a valuable historical resource.
Contents
The Rise of the Western World | 3 |
World Power Centers in the Sixteenth Century | 5 |
2 | 18 |
Copyright | |
32 other sections not shown