Development studies ordinarily take as their unit of analysis the nation-state, even when emphasizing the international context. Although there is a political reality to such analysis, it provides only a partial understanding of the source of change within a particular state. Market relations do not begin and end at geopolitical boundaries, nor do movements of capital and labor. States certainly secure these economic exchanges, but they remain part of the broader historical setting that results from the international character of capital and its market. In fact, states exist in a structured interrelation because their European antecedents have, through rivalry, organized an (uneven) world market, and because they make up the political framework of the world market. Thus, what happens within states has bearing on the international setting, and vice versa. Social change cannot be taken for granted as a process internal to states. With this proposition in mind, this book's theme is that the development of colonial Australia was also the process of development of the world-capitalist economy.

I have tackled this theme not by extrapolating from the world economy to Australia (qua “periphery”). This approach reifies the relationships concerned because it gives the world economy a life of its own. This term needs to be used cautiously, which means ensuring that it is a historical category, not an ideal type. It refers to the process of structuring world capitalism, and it derives from the more fundamental analysis of the politics of capitalist development within a world market constituted by interstate relations. Hence, a comprehensive study of social change would examine how the intersections of domestic and international forces are embedded in the sociopolitical dynamic of a particular state.