ABSTRACT
Several contributors to this volume argue that globalization is not a new phenomenon, but one that has waxed and waned over time. This survey of modern sea-borne empires reinforces their point. However, rather than market forces causing global diffusion, colonial states were responsible for the spread of European domination. But the sovereignty of administrators in the colonies was often strengthened. Initially hesitant to dismantle mercantilist colonial pacts at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, colonial rulers came to embrace an active role as agents of economic and cultural globalization by the 1850s, often permitting considerable local decision-making. Second thoughts became widespread between the 1880s and 1914, but it took the cataclysmic trauma of the First World War to provoke a blinkered retreat into imperial autarky.
