Nations without States: Class, Society and Geography in the world-system

This book offers a structural and longue durée analysis of Wales, Catalonia, the Mezzogiorno, and Padania, as regional configurations of the capitalist world-system. Rejecting methodological nationalism, it examines how these regions were historically produced through conquest, incorporation, dependency, accumulation, and uneven development within both state structures and global economic processes. Rather than treating them as autonomous ‘stateless nations’, the book analyses their political tensions, economic roles and cultural trajectories as outcomes of their relational position in the world-system. It traces how centralisation, resource extraction, administrative restructuring and differentiated economic functions have shaped their long-term development. Integrating political economy, territorial governance, historical sociology and comparative history, it reveals how modern states are built from internally differentiated regions whose conflicting roles are integral to the reproduction of capitalism. Through deep comparative analysis across centuries, the book illuminates how internal national questions persist, not as anomalies, but as structural features of capitalist modernity.