This chapter, which is by far the longest in the book, looks at the Eurocentric political world over the past eight centuries employing the spatio-political typology sketched in the preceding chapter and the frame of continuous (trans)formation presented in . I argue that on time frames of multiple centuries, dramatic change often is evident. But on time frames of several decades, continuity usually is much more evident. Furthermore, the processes that produce continuity and those that produce change are inextricably interrelated. For reasons of space, I focus especially on the early modern period, which I argue was less “modern” than a middle age between the medieval and the modern world. And rather than depict the rise (and demise) of modern states, I see a succession of different types of polities brought about through extensive and extended processes of continuous (trans)formation. The chapter concludes with a spatio-political reading of globalization that I contrast to several leading alternative framings.

In a world of pre-given substances (or static relations) change needs to be explained. In a processual world, though, change, not stasis, is the norm. Persistence therefore demands explanation. Living and social systems are far-from-thermodynamic-equilibrium systems that, by taking in and creatively utilizing matter or energy, temporarily stave off the inexorable physical progression of entropy (movement towards greater disorder; decay). Social continuities no less than social transformations are socially produced. (A state, for example, can be kept in the far-from-thermodynamic-equilibrium state of statehood only through extensive and complex processes of (re)production.) And both continuities and transformations arise from similar processes that operate continuously. The chapter illustrates what I call continuous (trans)formation with the case of the development of modern militaries and introduces both John Padgett and Walter Powell’s framing of transposition and re-functionality and William Sewell’s framing of eventful history.