Imperial capacity alone does not produce empire or capitalism.

Evidence

The Chinese came, they traded, they observed. They made no effort to create an empire or even an imperial sphere of influence. Upon returning home, their reports engendered a major debate. The decision was made to burn and otherwise destroy the great fleets… . The point is not to present the Chinese as immaculately disinterested, or whiter than white. It is simply to note that we now know that the capacity for empire does not lead irresistibly or inevitably to the reality of empire. … So China, if anything seemingly better placed prima facie to move forward to capitalism in terms of already having an extensive state bureaucracy, being further advanced in terms of the monetization of the economy and possibly of technology as well, was nonetheless less well placed after all. It was burdened by an imperial political structure. It was burdened by the ‘rationality’ of its value system which denied the state the leverage for change (had it wished to use it) that European monarchs found in the mysticality of European feudal loyalties. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1820

Categorization

• XREF: Wallerstein’s materialist rebuttal of Williams’s voluntarism connects to the core debate in Black Marxism about how European hegemony arose — and to the argument that proto-capitalist structures emerged globally before Europe seized them. — connects to: Empire alone does not automatically generate racial regimes.