Global Historical Antecedents

Ever since the word globalization entered Merriam-Webster's English dictionary, debate has raged over its definition. Although a degree of consensus was reached about the term referring to the growing interconnectedness of the world resulting in interdependence, scholars still cannot agree about its origin. It is this connectedness that distinguishes global history from world history. This entry shows some examples of early connections among human communities that developed into today's more complex globalization.

However, when these connections began creating antecedents of modern globalization remains in dispute. Some have dated the beginning of globalization with the 1492 arrival of Christopher Columbus to the New World bringing about hemispheric unification of the globe through commerce and migration. Others have argued that as long as the American landmass and the Atlantic Ocean comprising one third of the Earth's surface remained outside the trade network, it could not be termed global. They date the moment of the genesis of globalization precisely, “in 1571 with the establishment of direct and permanent linkages between the Americas and East Asia” (Flynn & Giraldez, 2004, p. 99) via the intermediary port of Manila. Yet others have traced putative globalizations to the [Page 685]thirteenth century when the world's largest land empire under the Mongols created unprecedented trade and cultural connections between Asia and Europe. Economic historians Kevin O'Rourke and John G. Williamson argue that the late 19th-century transportation revolution allowed large-scale trade and migration and thus laid the foundation for the current era of globalization. According to them, globalization began when large-scale trading brought about a convergence of commodity prices all over the world.

Another argument views globalization as old as human history and stemming from the basic human urge to seek a better and more fulfilling life (Chanda, 2007). That urge has driven many actors who can be broadly classified as traders, preachers, warriors, and adventurers to connect the world. Each of these agents left home in pursuit of a more enriching life or to fulfill personal ambitions and in the process deliberately or inadvertently linked the world. In so doing, these agents not only carried products, ideas, and technology across borders, but also with increased intercon-nectedness, they created what Roland Robertson calls “intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole” (1991, p. 8). The antecedents that history offers may not qualify literally as creating global connections—one has to wait until Ferdinand Magellan's circumnavigation of the world—but they nevertheless foreshadow the trend creating modern globalization by long-distance linkages, elements of interdependence, and by developing the consciousness of inhabiting one world.