Introduction: The Rise of the BRICS in the Global Political Economy: Changing Paradigms?

[Extract] The world has been dominated by the West since the eighteenth century,
with the empires of the UK, France, Germany, Portugal and the
Netherlands dividing up the resources of Asia amongst themselves. The
genesis and continuation of such an imbalance in the world order is an
intricate account of the economic, historical, political and social developments within individual countries or regions and between countries or
regions. Even so a sketch of the global politico-economic history in the
past two hundred years can put things into perspective.