Though West Africa and West African gold is generally acknowledged to have played a critical role in the high and later medieval world economy, the full extent of the region's global influence remains understudied in Global Middle Ages scholarship. This is not a new development but instead a continuation of a trend begun with the development of world systems theory, a key methodological paradigm used in the production of Global Middle Ages scholarship. By tracing the development of world systems theory and contextualizing it in historiography of West Africa and the Latin West, this essay seeks to offer answers for this analytical lacuna and provide potential strategies for producing more holistic scholarship.