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Book Title: Globalization: A Very Short Introduction. Contributors: Manfred B. Steger - author. Publisher: Oxford University Press. Place of Publication: Oxford. Publication Year: 2003.
Page Number: 17 a Chapter 2 Is globalization a new phenomenon? If we asked an ordinary person on the streets of London, New York, Bangkok, or Rio de Janeiro about the essence of globalization, the answer would probably involve some reference to growing forms of political and economic interdependence fuelled by new technologies like personal computers, the Internet, cellular phones, pagers, fax machines, palm pilots, digital cameras, high-definition televisions, satellites, jet planes, space shuttles, and supertankers. As subsequent chapters will show, however, technology provides only a partial explanation for the existence of contemporary forms of globalization. Yet, it would be foolish to deny that these new innovations have played a crucial role in the creation, multiplication, expansion, and intensification of global social interconnections and exchanges. The Internet, in particular, has assumed a pivotal function in facilitating globalization through the creation of the World Wide Web that connects billions of individuals, private associations, and governments. Since most of these technologies have been around for less than three decades, it seems to make sense to agree with those commentators who claim that globalization is, indeed, a new phenomenon.
At the same time, however, the definition of globalization we arrived at in the previous chapter stresses the dynamic nature of the phenomenon. The enhancement of worldwide interdependence - 17 - and the general growth of awareness of deepening global connections are gradual processes with deep historical roots. For example, the engineers who developed laptop computers and supersonic jet planes stand on the shoulders of earlier innovators who created the steam engine, the cotton gin, the telegraph, the phonograph, the telephone, the typewriter, the internal-combustion engine, and electrical appliances. These products, in turn, owe their existence to much earlier technological inventions such as the telescope, the compass, water wheels, windmills, gunpowder, the printing press, and oceangoing ships. In order to acknowledge the full historical record, we reach back even further to such momentous technological and social achievements as the production of paper, the development of writing, the invention of the wheel, the domestication of wild plants and animals, the emergence of language, and, finally, the slow outward migration of our African ancestors at the dawn of human evolution.
Thus, the answer to the question of whether globalization constitutes a new phenomenon depends upon how far we are willing to extend the chain of causation that resulted in those recent technologies and social arrangements that most people have come to associate with this fashionable buzzword. Some scholars consciously limit the historical scope of globalization to the last four decades of post industrialism in order to capture its contemporary features. Others are willing to extend this timeframe to include the ground-breaking developments of the 19 th century. Still others argue that globalization really represents the continuation and extension of complex processes that began with the emergence of modernity and the capitalist world system some five centuries ago.
And a few remaining researchers refuse to confine globalization to time periods measured in mere decades or centuries. Rather, they suggest that these processes have been unfolding for millennia. No doubt, each of these contending perspectives contains - 18 - important insights. As we will see in subsequent chapters, the advocates of the first approach have marshalled impressive evidence for their view that the dramatic expansion and acceleration of global exchanges since the early 1970 s represents a quantum leap in the history of globalization. The proponents of the second view correctly emphasize the tight connection between contemporary forms of globalization and the explosion of technology known as the Industrial Revolution. The representatives of the third perspective rightly point to the significance of the timeshare compression that occurred in the 16 th century.
Finally, the advocates of the fourth approach advance a rather sensible argument when they insist that any truly comprehensive account of globalization falls woefully short without the incorporation of ancient developments and enduring dynamics into our planetary history. While the short chronology outlined below is necessarily fragmentary and general, it nonetheless gives us a good sense that globalization is as old as humanity itself. This brief historical sketch identifies five distinct historical periods that are separated from each other by significant accelerations in the pace of social exchanges as well as a widening of their geographical scope. In this context, it is important to bear in mind that my chronology does not necessarily imply a linear unfolding of history, nor does it advocate a conventional Eurocentric perspective of world history.
Full of unanticipated surprises, violent twists, sudden punctuations, and dramatic reversals, the history of globalization has involved all major regions and cultures of our planet. Thus, it behoves us to refrain from imposing deterministic ideas of inevitability and irreversibility on globalization. However, it is important to note the occurrence of dramatic technological and social leaps in history that have pushed the intensity and global reach of these processes to new levels. Approaching our short chronology of globalization with these caveats in mind, we will be - 19 -
able to appreciate both the novelty of each period and the continuity of the phenomenon itself. The prehistoric period (10, 000 BCE 3, 500 BCE) Let us begin our brief historical sketch of globalization about 12, 000 years ago when small bands of hunters and gatherers reached the southern tip of South America. This event marked the end of the long process of settling all five continents that was begun by our hominid African ancestors more than one million years ago.
Although some major island groups in the Pacific and the Atlantic were not inhabited until relatively recent times, the truly global dispersion of our species was finally achieved. The successful endeavour of the South American nomads rested on the migratory achievements of their Siberian ancestors who had crossed the Bering Strait into North America a thousand years earlier. In this earliest phase of globalization,
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