The Origins of Globalization
Who Invented Globalization?
Globalization is the process of the world’s economies, cultures, and people growing increasingly interconnected. It has been around for thousands of years but really picked up speed during the Age of Discovery and in the decades after World War II.
But who invented it? And how did it become so important?
The Age of Discovery
During the 15th century, Europeans began to explore the world through sea travel. Many famous voyages were made during this time, including Christopher Columbus’s exploration of the Americas. These voyages helped to make the globe more familiar to Europeans, and also led to new discoveries that helped transform geography into a modern science.
Valerie Hansen, a historian at Yale University, says that globalization started long ago with ancient trade and exploration links among communities and cultures. But it really gained momentum in the years after World War II with freer trade and international cooperation, and with the introduction of communications and transportation technologies like the Internet.
These developments allowed businesses to source raw materials from one part of the world, manufacture their products in another, and distribute them around the world. This is the true definition of globalization.
The Middle Ages
In the Middle Ages, trade and exploration led to a global exchange of goods, ideas, and culture. Today, that same process continues with the internet and technological advances allowing information to be instantly shared around the world.
Cultural globalization occurs when traditions that originated in one country are adopted by another. For example, avocados were first cultivated in Mexico but now are found on many tables in the US thanks to global trades.
However, medieval global history remains a young field. The focus of most discussions is on Eurasia, limiting the potential for a truly global perspective on medieval history. Nonetheless, it is important to acknowledge similarities between the meta-narrative coordination of space and time that we know as globalization and older narratives of the world.
The Age of Revolution
The Age of Revolutions saw ideas about liberty, equality and fraternity spread like wildfire from America to France to Latin America. As these ideas took root they created a vast web of commerce and trade that spun out across the world and continues to spin today.
During this time, the development of steamships and railways reduced barriers to shipping goods and allowed nations to specialize in their manufacture. It was also during this time that a sense of globalization really started to grow as countries began to participate in international organizations such as the Bretton Woods Conference, which helped to reduce trade barriers between countries.
During this time, technological change also fostered automation, which made it possible for businesses to research in one country, source raw materials in another, and then manufacture in a third. This was the start of true globalization.
The Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution brought with it sweeping sociocultural changes. Urban areas expanded rapidly as rural people moved to cities for jobs. This created a new generation of consumers, which in turn led to the development of businesses.
This was the first time that factories produced and sold goods to many markets at once, so the process of globalization started to take shape. This was aided by the development of shipping systems and liberal trade policies.
Theodore Levitt is credited with coining the term “globalization” in 1983, in an article for Harvard Business Review. He defined it as the spread of standardized, low-priced consumer products. This was well before the age of the Internet and a great deal of technological change, but it was the beginning of a new era.
The Information Age
In the 1990s, globalization went into overdrive thanks to advances in computer and communication technology. It enabled someone in Boston to read about a breaking news story in Bolivia in real-time on their computer screen, and for a business to research their products in one country, source raw materials from another, manufacture them in another and then ship them around the world, all with much less friction than in the past.
But while the meanings of other seminal ‘keywords’ such as ‘economy’ or’modernity’ grew slowly and on a relatively continuous base, the term ‘globalization’ had a much shorter and more discontinuous history. Which begs the question: who invented it? Some claim that it dates back to the Age of Discovery, when explorers began linking the world through trade and exploration.