ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the standard Eurocentric narratives and advances an alternative non-Eurocentric vision of globalization. It provides a brief overview of the conventional Eurocentric literature on globalization, focusing largely on post-1945 Western international theory while also considering classical approaches in order to reveal the essential properties of Eurocentrism. The chapter focuses on the “dialogues of civilizations” wherein early globalization took the form of Orientalization and the diffusion of Eastern resource portfolios which, in turn, enabled the rise of the West. The chapter explains the task of inverting the big bang trope by advancing the proposition that non-Western-led globalization preceded Western-led globalization. The Eurocentric big bang theory presumes that in the first step Europe single-handedly broke through into modernity before in the second step it expanded outwards initially through proto-globalization between 1492 and c.1945 and subsequently through thick globalization after 1945.
