Most of Andre Gunder Frank's early work on the
nature of underdevelopment focused on one continent: Latin America. Here
he broadened his canvas and traced the world-wide effects of the
process of capital accumulation from the period just prior to the
discovery of America to the industrial and French revolutions. It is
Frank's thesis that "the world has experienced a single all-embracing,
albeit unequal and uneven, process of capital accumulation centered in
Western Europe," which has been capitalist for at least two centuries.