ABSTRACT
Contemporary scholars and policy-makers have come to consider that the world economy has entered into a totally new phase and that globalization will have unprecedented effects on trade, technology, finance and even economic policies. Interdependence is rapidly becoming the norm of the new order. The evidence to support this view is derived from the erosion and transformation of the national and international system inherited from the Second World War. But the Annales School and the longue durée approach suggest that what many regard as a new phenomenon is not necessarily so.
