Annales School
There are three major predecessors of world-systems theory: the Annales school, the Marxist tradition, and the dependence theory. The Annales School tradition (represented most notably by Fernand Braudel) influenced Wallerstein to focus on long-term processes and geo-ecological regions as units of analysis. Marxism added a stress on social conflict, a focus on the capital accumulation process and competitive class struggles, a focus on a relevant totality, the transitory nature of social forms and a dialectical sense of motion through conflict and contradiction.