A prolonged and massive increase in aggregate wealth per capita has taken place over several centuries. - Robert Gilpin

Until the modern era there was no single international system, but rather several international systems, with little or no contact with another.

Both the control of territory and the political domination of one state over another have profound consequences for international economic relations. However... market power or economic power has itself become a principal means by which states seek to organize and manipulate the international division of labor to their own advantage.

It would be premature to suggest that the nation-state is dead or dying.