ABSTRACT
Developments around 1500, and the systems that resulted, clearly moved closer to full globalization. The inclusion of the Americas in patterns of contact and, soon, the first definitely recorded trip across the Pacific, created the possibility of growing links to virtually every major society. Pockets of isolation remained. Australia and New Zealand were not fully brought into the picture until the 18th century, and well after that small clusters of hunting-and-gathering tribes people in remote spots were untouched by even tentative contact. But isolation was now the exception, and most regions became ever more substantially involved with exchanges of goods, people, diseases and more. The new global geography was only part of the change, however. The intensity and consequences of connections shifted. Precisely because exchanges had more intrusive implications, some societies consciously decided to limit their involvement – a backhanded testimony to the fact that contacts now raised new kinds of identity issues, compared to the more casual patterns of the previous phase. New types of inequality arose within the global system as well, that would become durable staples, at least to some extent, from the 1500s to the present day. In several respects, then, the meaning of global connections began to take on new contours. As happened after 1000, momentum would continue after 1500, leading to further changes, particularly by the 18th century, that enhanced global activities. Many global historians acknowledge the importance of the changes that
began to take hold at this point. One leading practitioner of the new global history, Wolf Schäfer, who argues that massive shifts after 1950 have created a fundamentally different world based on globalization, admits that 1500 nevertheless opened a significant new chapter, which he calls “protoglobalization.” If the really big stuff was still to come, in other words, the innovations of the 16th century nevertheless deserve credit for a considerable push. Interestingly, in contrast, the historians who have been working to see
globalization emerging in several stages, rather than one great contemporary swoop, have tended to downplay 1500 in favor of later key dates. To be sure, Robbie Robertson, writing of the “three waves” of globalization, introduces the first wave in the 16th century, when
human societies experienced a fundamental change in their interconnections. Previously isolated communities found themselves dangerously exposed to new global forces. Many societies were transformed by the experience; others were enslaved. Many peoples did not survive.
