ABSTRACT
Globalization has a complex history. It does not sail smoothly from some earlier point in time, like 1000 CE, though there are connections among the different phases of trans-regional contact over the past millennium. It does not emerge brand new from the heads of policy innovators and communications inventors 50 years ago. There are good cases to be made for several key junctures in the history of globalization (or protoglobalization or archaic globalization – the various terms show how hard it is to pinpoint a single date of origin). Ultimately, it’s the complexity that emerges as the key finding, not a need to make a decisive selection of one particular episode. Analyzing globalization’s origins and phases encounters several cultural
sticking points in the history discipline and in contemporary attitudes alike. Historians, as we have seen, do tend to like to push things back in time, to claim that what seems new actually started earlier. After all, the past is their stock in trade, and lending the past undue contemporary significance is an occupational hazard. The tendency does not mean that any particular claims – for example, about developments around 1000 CE or before – are wrong, just that they deserve scrutiny. Lots of people tend to fall victim to inevitability arguments, that is, to
arguments that once one particular pattern developed, later patterns inevitability follow. Globalization certainly asks students of the process to try to figure out at what point inter-regional contacts were so intense – even with far different technologies from those available today – that later amplifications followed naturally, without much need for additional causation. (Or a variant: globalization is new but now sets an inevitable path for all regions.) Historians usually caution against too much inevitability, against a tendency to look for straight-line connections between past and present (this wars against the impulse to find earlier-than-expected origins). Globalization calls for some sorting through of the inevitability aspects: at what juncture did the process become essentially self-sustaining? Contemporary culture, perhaps especially in the United States, tends to
exaggerate recent change, to argue that far more transformation, and more fundamental transformation, is occurring than is actually the case, and to
minimize continuities from earlier points in time. The claim of revolutionary developments in this or that area is almost constant. Globalization is a massive invitation to this kind of hyperbole, to the temptation to dismiss the past and enshrine the present, and historical analysis, even if not always conclusive, is desirable particularly to guard against over-facile assumptions. The fact that contemporary culture exaggerates the novel does not mean that claims of groups like the new global historians are wrong, just that – like the push-things-farther-back impulses of many conventional historians – they deserve sensitive analysis. The history of globalization may invite, as part of its complexity, a more
nuanced view of the whole process than most globalization theories have emphasized. We suggested earlier the possibility of breaking it into constituent parts, before recombining the whole, and historical analysis facilitates this approach. Certain aspects of globalization go way back in time, and while they did not have contemporary shape early on, there are certainly some connections between then and now. Migration and disease transmission are the most obvious aspects that begin to set a trans-regional stage early on. Extensive and regular trade, despite important anticipations fairly early, may have a slightly later origin, though it certainly developed intensely enough several centuries ago, along with the business organizations to match, that a purely recent date is questionable. Political and cultural globalizations, though again they offer some earlier hints, seem to begin decisively in the later 19th century. But full environmental globalization is a recent product. Current globalization not only reflects recent policies and technologies. It also interweaves the many strands that began to take shape early on. One of its telling features, in fact, is its multifaceted quality, its blending of trade with culture, innovative politics with old-new patterns of disease transmission. Historical perspective is central to understanding this process, and how it departs from, yet builds on, the past. While pointing to partial origins well before the contemporary era, history
also shows the oscillating quality of globalization. Globalization or protoglobalization has not moved forward steadily. There are periods of relative stability punctuated by new factors that begin to accelerate change, and there are periods of at least partial retreat. The second quarter of the 20th century – not that long ago – is a particularly important case in point. Serious globalization had blossomed in the later 19th century, but it did not bring uniform benefits and it suffered from excessive Western dominance – and it caused widespread pushback after World War I. This pattern could, after all, be repeated again in the future, despite the more recent intensification of the process. Within China today, for example, intellectuals divide over whether globalization is a benefit or a curse, with some claiming that China can find greater world voice as well as prosperity through participating in globalization; but others damning the process as a Western-capitalist plot that will force China into a foreign mold – and this in a country that, many
observers might argue, has profited particularly from new global contacts over the past two decades. On a wider scale, depending on what aspects of globalization are emphasized, polls show that upwards of 53 to 79 percent of all people in the world oppose globalization today. Economic globalization is widely feared, because it brings too much inequality and so many factors that escape regional governance, but cultural globalization is even more resented (by up to 70 percent of those polled) on grounds of loss of identity; only political globalization wins (bare) majority support, apparently because many people hope that more effective political agreements will help keep other aspects of globalization under control. To be sure, there is regional variation: people in North America (particularly the Atlantic and Pacific coasts), western Europe and Japan – especially young people – like cultural globalization, by a 4-1 margin; but all generations in most other regions disagree vigorously. Interestingly, however, people in the United States, against the global majority, seem to fear political globalization above all, though there are also concerns about economic dislocation and immigration (and, among some groups, about culture as well). Worldwide, women are slightly more likely to favor most aspects of globalization than men are – which makes sense in terms of the history of at least recent globalization and its bearing on traditional gender alignments, but which adds another dose of complexity. With attitudes and mixtures of this sort, with so much division and hostility, can we be sure that another retreat might not occur? The historical perspective certainly shows why there are so many arguments
among scholars, activists and ordinary people alike about the pros and cons of globalization. Problems with protoglobalization surfaced early, particularly in terms of regional economic inequalities and undue dominance by certain societies. All phases of globalization have left some groups feeling they were losing control or were being challenged if they hoped to retain cherished cultural identities. Many of these problems have continued to dog the process, often accelerating as globalization itself becomes more intense, creating great sensitivity to the economic drawbacks for many groups and encouraging the perception that globalization is simply a fancy name for Western or American economic and cultural imperialism. Globalization has marched forward anyway, though sometimes amid interruptions and ongoing regional disagreements, but the hostilities remain important as well. One of the intriguing aspects of the contemporary era is the effort, still tentative, to figure out how best to express concerns directly about the process itself, how to give voice to people otherwise ignored except by conscientious pollsters. This aspect of globalization history is still being written. Globalization, despite all the debate about it, is not an abstraction. As it
has unfolded in key phases, it has affected what people in many regions ate, what they valued in life, what kind of education they sought, what diseases they might contract and of course what kinds of goods they bought. It has stimulated a sense of adventure and the excitement of encountering different
cultures, and it has created a fear that risks were too great and that one’s own ways of thinking about things must be protected from outside contagion. It has defined key political issues for leaders and voters alike, even when domestic issues seem easier to grapple with. The daily meanings of globalization are more important now than ever before, but they are not brand new. The unfolding of globalization over time is a story of changes people encountered in many aspects of life, of new stimulus and new anxiety alike. This mixture, too, continues to unfold.
