" I’ve recently published a book on the world system in the thirteenth century, entitled Before European Hegemony. It was intended in pan as a corrective to Immanuel Wallerstein’s work on the sixteenth century et seq. world-system. My criticism was that Wallerstein, while creatively extending the work of other historians and correcting for some of their biases, had still accepted the main line of western historical scholarship: namely, that the “story” becomes interesting only with the “Rise of the West” after 1450. "