Giovanni Arrighi

Independent activity Academic Marxism 1937.7.7.–2009.6.18.

World-systems analyst who retold the history of capitalism as successive cycles of accumulation and hegemony in The Long Twentieth Century

Born in Milan, Arrighi studied economics at Bocconi University. Teaching in Rhodesia and at Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, he studied how labour supply and labour resistance shaped colonialism and national liberation movements, and there met Immanuel Wallerstein. Back in Italy in 1969, he and others formed the "Gruppo Gramsci" in 1971. In 1979 he joined the Fernand Braudel Center at Binghamton, and from 1998 he was professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins University. In The Long Twentieth Century (1994) and Adam Smith in Beijing (2007) he traced the origins and transformations of global capitalism and the shift of economic power to East Asia. He died at his home in Baltimore in 2009.