Abstract
Since the end of the Second World War, the Australasian economies have fared poorly relative both to the high-income states of western Europe and North America and to the `miracle' economies strung along the Pacific coasts of Asia. This article attempts to analyze the post-war trajectories of antipodean economies in the context of the reconstruction of the world market under US hegemony after the end of the Second World War. The first section traces the rise of Japan and the emergence of Pacific Asia as a consolidated nexus of densely interwoven patterns of relational networks. The second section examines how ongoing processes of capitalist restructuring undermined the Asian miracle economies. Finally, the last section seeks to analyze the causes for the disproportionately adverse impact that processes of worldwide transformation have had for the two antipodean settler states