Globalization
A Short History
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- $27.99
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- $27.99
Publisher Description
"Globalization" has become a popular buzzword for explaining today's world. The expression achieved terminological stardom in the 1990s and was soon embraced by the general public and integrated into numerous languages.
But is this much-discussed phenomenon really an invention of modern times? In this work, Jürgen Osterhammel and Niels Petersson make the case that globalization is not so new, after all. Arguing that the world did not turn "global" overnight, the book traces the emergence of globalization over the past seven or eight centuries. In fact, the authors write, the phenomenon can be traced back to early modern large-scale trading, for example, the silk trade between China and the Mediterranean region, the shipping routes between the Arabian Peninsula and India, and the more frequently traveled caravan routes of the Near East and North Africa--all conduits for people, goods, coins, artwork, and ideas.
Osterhammel and Petersson argue that the period from 1750 to 1880--an era characterized by the development of free trade and the long-distance impact of the industrial revolution--represented an important phase in the globalization phenomenon. Moreover, they demonstrate how globalization in the mid-twentieth century opened up the prospect of global destruction though nuclear war and ecological catastrophe. In the end, the authors write, today's globalization is part of a long-running transformation and has not ushered in a "global age" radically different from anything that came before.
This book will appeal to historians, economists, and anyone in the social sciences who is interested in the historical emergence of globalization.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
If globalization represents a "new historical epoch," it must, as this text asserts, have its origins in a history extending much further back than the recent past. With this concise and insightful work, Osterhammel and Peterson, who both teach history at the University of Konstanz, seek to provide a brief account of just that history. With analytical precision, they trace the evolution of globalization from its "prehistory" in pre-modern civilization to its possible "golden age" in the mid-1970s. Their analysis emphasizes economic developments over cultural and political events. When they discuss the "double" French and Industrial revolutions of the late 18th century, for example, they focus decidedly on the latter; similarly, their narrative of the early Cold War spends a great deal of time on the rise and fall of the Bretton Woods agreement yet only briefly mentions the Korean War. Still, given the authors' belief that globalization represents the increasing power of the market over the nation-state, that bias is largely understandable. While the book is dense and academic-one can easily imagine college students taking notes on it in a library-it offers a compelling historical introduction to a contentious and significant concept.
