Stearns Chapter 9: Globalization since the 1940s: A New Global History?
- New communication opportunities in the course of the 20th century,
melted distance and time. People could now reach each other
immediately, all around the world. → Travel was less disruptive than ever
before.
- This shrinking of communication gaps made new types of collaboration possible:
scientists could work on the same problem in real time. Also connections among
stock markets tightened as news could be exchanged instantaneously.
- But not only technology changed: in 1946, the International Labour Office
instituted an international minimum wage for all merchant seamen. → Not
just technologies, but policies and organizations too, were creating a new
world community.
- A group of “New global historians” have been using historical perspective to highlight
how much is brand new about the global age of the past half-century. Mazlish states
that we are entering a global epoch meaning that globalization is quite new. This
group regards earlier developments not as globalization.
- This group sees global as a huge step beyond “modern”, for modern means
industrial, they differ from the implications of the global. Another claim: earlier
international contacts revolved mainly around trade, but globalization is far more
encompassing, with far more facets than commerce and capitalism alone. A global
economy is also different from the already existing world economy.
- Globalization also goes beyond conventional politics, it undermines both nation and
state. Power shifts to forces like communications networks and environmental
impacts, or less fixed institutions like NGO’s and MNO’s.
- Some of these new global historians, plea for new global ethics and humane
standards to match and control the changes they see in organization and technology.
But how fundamental are these transformations?
- There must be a balance between the local and the global. There is even a new term
used: glocalization, to describe the mixture of global and local features.
- New global historians do not necessarily agree that the world is better in this new
phase; new problems are also acknowledged.
- But when does it start? Most historians, also the “new global” group, regard the mid-
20th century as the changing point. But, the Cold War also took shape in these
decades, dividing much of the world along ideological lines, which is not consistent
with the general processes we associate with globalization.
- The relationship of recent globalization to other commonly mentioned processes like
Westernization and Americanizatoin, deserves comment in advance. It is true that
American cultural, economic and military influence plays a substantial role in
contemporary globalization. The broader process of Westernization is also
significant: spread of democracy, women’s rights.
The New Framework: Technology, Policy, and Language:
- Technology and intentional global policies were familiar developments from the 19th
century, but they embraced new features. Language had more novel qualities.
- WW2 helped lead to new divisions that underpinned the Cold War between SU and
US and their allies. WW2 also hastened the dismantling of the Western empires,
although decolonization was a global movement in itself, spreading rapidly around
the world.
- New communication opportunities in the course of the 20th century,
melted distance and time. People could now reach each other
immediately, all around the world. → Travel was less disruptive than ever
before.
- This shrinking of communication gaps made new types of collaboration possible:
scientists could work on the same problem in real time. Also connections among
stock markets tightened as news could be exchanged instantaneously.
- But not only technology changed: in 1946, the International Labour Office
instituted an international minimum wage for all merchant seamen. → Not
just technologies, but policies and organizations too, were creating a new
world community.
- A group of “New global historians” have been using historical perspective to highlight
how much is brand new about the global age of the past half-century. Mazlish states
that we are entering a global epoch meaning that globalization is quite new. This
group regards earlier developments not as globalization.
- This group sees global as a huge step beyond “modern”, for modern means
industrial, they differ from the implications of the global. Another claim: earlier
international contacts revolved mainly around trade, but globalization is far more
encompassing, with far more facets than commerce and capitalism alone. A global
economy is also different from the already existing world economy.
- Globalization also goes beyond conventional politics, it undermines both nation and
state. Power shifts to forces like communications networks and environmental
impacts, or less fixed institutions like NGO’s and MNO’s.
- Some of these new global historians, plea for new global ethics and humane
standards to match and control the changes they see in organization and technology.
But how fundamental are these transformations?
- There must be a balance between the local and the global. There is even a new term
used: glocalization, to describe the mixture of global and local features.
- New global historians do not necessarily agree that the world is better in this new
phase; new problems are also acknowledged.
- But when does it start? Most historians, also the “new global” group, regard the mid-
20th century as the changing point. But, the Cold War also took shape in these
decades, dividing much of the world along ideological lines, which is not consistent
with the general processes we associate with globalization.
- The relationship of recent globalization to other commonly mentioned processes like
Westernization and Americanizatoin, deserves comment in advance. It is true that
American cultural, economic and military influence plays a substantial role in
contemporary globalization. The broader process of Westernization is also
significant: spread of democracy, women’s rights.
The New Framework: Technology, Policy, and Language:
- Technology and intentional global policies were familiar developments from the 19th
century, but they embraced new features. Language had more novel qualities.
- WW2 helped lead to new divisions that underpinned the Cold War between SU and
US and their allies. WW2 also hastened the dismantling of the Western empires,
although decolonization was a global movement in itself, spreading rapidly around
the world.
