History suggests that every 100 years a new nation state arises to dominate the world economy. In the 1400s the Italian city states - Venice, Florence, Genoa & Milan - stood astride and were central to the world's trading system. In the 1500s Portugal & Spain in alliance with the Austrian Hapsburgs took up the mantle. By the 1600s it was the turn of the Dutch (i.e. in the guise of the United Provinces of Netherlands). That was then followed by a period of French dominance in the 1700s and then British in the 1800s and more recently the US this past century. Approximately every 100 years, a new power emerges to take on the mantle of world economic primacy (table 1).

Kindleberger, in his seminal work, World Economic Primacy 1500 - 1990 (published 1996), identifies the typical life cycle and characteristics of an emerging world economic power from its arrival onto the world stage through to its twilight years as its global predominance starts to wane. In the book he neatly summarises the "usual progression in the national cycle from trade to industry to finance".