ABSTRACT
Introduction There is currently a consensus that early modern colonization and empire-building were among the major early drivers of globalization. Notwithstanding the asymmetrical power relations on which they rested and the violence that so often accompanied them, they irrefutably promoted the interconnection of places and nations across the globe, and fostered the worldwide circulation of people, diseases, plants, commodities, religions and concepts, etc. – including, of course, institutions.
