Centre and periphery

With distance from the market, transport costs rise and the price of land falls. It becomes less economical to intensify production by increasing inputs of labour or capital, except on land which either is very fertile or has particularly good access to transport arteries. It may therefore be predicted that the intensive, slave-run villa will be successful and profitable only within a limited area of central Italy. Farms outside this region may still sell their surplus production to the metropolis. However, it becomes increasingly unlikely that there will be dramatic changes in agricultural practice in response to the demands of the market; at most, we may expect to find that regional specialities, distinctive local products which could be sold in Rome, would have a prominent place within the standard mixture of crops. In many areas of Italy, farming practices were determined purely by local environmental conditions; in other regions, the stimulus to change was provided by the demands of markets other than the metropolis.

It is possible, however, that this picture of the steady decline of metropolitan influence with distance from the city is misleading. In the ‘world-systems theory’ of Wallerstein, the periphery is not left to its own devices by the more advanced countries that form the core of the worldsystem; rather, it is exploited in a different manner. The periphery serves as a source of raw materials and as a market for goods manufactured by the core nations, and it is in the latter's interest to maintain this state of affairs.