History of globalization

[2][3] Perhaps the extreme proponent of a deep historical origin for globalization was Andre Gunder Frank, an economist associated with dependency theory.

Frank argued that a form of globalization has been in existence since the rise of trade links between Sumer and the Indus Valley civilization in the third millennium BC.

The development of agriculture furthered globalization by converting the vast majority of the world's population into a settled lifestyle.

[5] The contemporary process of globalization likely occurred around the middle of the 19th century as increased capital and labor mobility coupled with decreased transport costs led to a smaller world.

[6] An early form of globalized economics and culture, known as archaic globalization, existed during the Hellenistic Age, when commercialized urban centers were focused around the axis of Greek culture over a wide range that stretched from India to Spain, with such cities as Alexandria, Athens, and Antioch at its center.

Trade was widespread during that period, and it is the first time the idea of a cosmopolitan culture (from Greek "Cosmopolis", meaning "world city") emerged.

The increasing articulation of commercial links between these powers inspired the development of the Silk Road, which started in western China, reached the boundaries of the Parthian empire, and continued onwards towards Rome.

Globally significant crops such as sugar and cotton became widely cultivated across the Muslim world in this period, while the necessity of learning Arabic and completing the Hajj created a cosmopolitan culture.

[8] The advent of the Mongol Empire, though destabilizing to the commercial centers of the Middle East and China, greatly facilitated travel along the Silk Road.

It witnessed the creation of the first international postal service, as well as the rapid transmission of epidemic diseases such as bubonic plague across the newly unified regions of Central Asia.

The Age of Discovery brought a broad change in globalization, being the first period in which Eurasia and Africa engaged in substantial cultural, material and biologic exchange with the New World.

It began in the late 15th century, when the two Kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula – Portugal and Castile – sent the first exploratory voyages around the Cape of Good Hope and to the Americas, "discovered" in 1492 by Christopher Columbus.

Shortly before the turn of the 16th century, Portuguese started establishing trading posts (factories) from Africa to Asia and Brazil, to deal with the trade of local products like slaves, gold, spices and timber, introducing an international business center under a royal monopoly, the House of India.

Industrialization allowed cheap production of household items using economies of scale,[citation needed] while rapid population growth created sustained demand for commodities.

After the First and Second Opium Wars, which opened up China to foreign trade, and the completion of the British conquest of India, the vast populations of these regions became ready consumers of European exports.

[13] The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea, the various products of the whole earth, and reasonably expect their early delivery upon his doorstep.

What an extraordinary episode in the economic progress of man was that age which came to an end in August 1914.Between the globalization in the 19th and 20th centuries, there are significant differences.

It has tended to begin earlier in the recent period than in the typical crisis episode a hundred years ago.

The European-dominated networks were increasingly confronted with images and stories of 'others', thus, they took it upon themselves to take the role of world's guardians of universal law and morality.

[15] The novelist VM Yeates criticised the financial forces of globalization as a factor in creating World War I.

[17] Globalization, since World War II, is partly the result of planning by politicians to break down borders hampering trade.

However, a contrasting trend soon became evident in the emergence of movements protesting against globalization and giving new momentum to the defense of local uniqueness, individuality, and identity.