Volume 1 examines interrelations between sources of power from neolithic times up to just before the Industrial Revolution in England.

Michael Mann is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of Power in the 21st Century: Conversations with John Hall (2011), Incoherent Empire (2003) and Fascists (Cambridge University Press, 2004). His book The Dark Side of Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2004) was awarded the Barrington Moore Award of the American Sociological Association for the best book in comparative and historical sociology in 2006.

Preface to the second edition; 1. Societies as organized power networks; 2. The end of general social evolution: how prehistoric peoples evaded power; 3. The emergence of stratification, states and multi-power-actor civilisation in Mesopotamia; 4. A comparative analysis of the emergence of stratification, states and multi-power-actor civilisations; 5. The first empires of domination: the dialectics of compulsory cooperation; 6. 'Indo-Europeans' and iron: expanding, diversified power networks; 7. Phoenicians and Greeks: decentralized multi-power-actor civilisations; 8. Revitalized empires of domination: Assyria and Persia; 9. The Roman territorial empire; 10. Ideology transcendent: the Christian ecumene; 11. A comparative excursus into the world religions: Confucianism, Islam, and (especially) Hindu caste; 12. The European dynamic: I. the intensive phase, AD 800-1155; 13. The European dynamics: II. the rise of coordinating states, 1155-1477; 14. The European dynamic: III. international capitalism and organic national states, 1477-1760; 15. European conclusions: explaining European dynamism - capitalism, Christendom, and states; 16. Patterns of world-historical development in agrarian societies; Index.