ABSTRACT
Today we hear much talk of the ‘globalization’ of politics, economics, communications and culture. The developments encompassed by that term have certainly accelerated in the course of the past few decades, yet they also possess a much longer history, running back at least to the age of Columbus. By the time the nineteenth century drew to a close, their leading features were very strongly evident in the way that nearly every part of the world was being transformed by the overlapping processes of ‘Europeanization’ and ‘Westernization’. However, there also existed a certain tension between these two phenomena, which was most strongly apparent in Europe’s often ambiguous relations with the rising power of the USA.
