This book studies the effects of cyclical fluctuations in the process of capital accumulation — the sixteenth-century expansion, the seventeenth-century depression, the cyclical swings between the Glorious Revolution in England in 1688 and the Peace of Paris in 1763, the Depression and the American, French, and Industrial Revolutions between 1762 and 1789.

Frank connects the downswings or crises in accumulation to the changing leadership positions as they shifted from Italy to Spain and Portugal and then to Holland and Britain. He devotes particular attention to the successive incorporation into the single world system of Asia, Africa, and the Americas, whose economies and societies were transformed to contribute to the accumulation of capital in Western Europe and later in North America through exploitation, dependence, and unequal exchange.