Summary: Peter Stearns - Globalization in World History
Chapter 1: Globalization and the challenge to historical analysis
● In the last few years, globalization has been attacked from different angles.
From the left: globalization promotes systems that threaten progressive goals,
it is economically and environmentally unsustainable. From the right:
globalization tears down the precious values of the nation and has left many
workers unemployed. Globalization enhancement of fundamentalist entities
like ISIS.
● Can the process of globalization be turned?
● Globalization has human meaning.
● The term ‘globalization’ emerged in the 1960s. It was thought that
globalization would produce a different and better world. Q: how new is
globalization compared with previous patterns of contact among societies in
different regions in the world? Also, what caused globalization?
● New global historians believe that recent globalization is a huge change and
claim it began in the 1950s. Another group claims it started in the late 19 th
century. A last group, the world historians, argue that globalization should be
seen as emerging in phases rather than in one burst of innovation.
● Globalization has become one of the defining features of world history but it
emerges from a complex and long-standing process of change.
● The book focuses on four major turning points: around 1000, 1500, 1850 and
in the recent few decades.
● It is important to see globalization in terms of the accumulation of different
patterns of contact, rather than as a single framework.
● Globalization is both an intensification of the range and speed of
contacts among different parts of the world and an expansion of the
kinds of activities intimately involved in global interactions →
explains why global interactions play an increasingly active role in
shaping human lives.
● The pull to separate and the pull to connect go far back in human history.
● By 10,000 BCE, before the advent of agriculture, the roughly 10 million people
in the world had populated virtually all inhabitable areas. Huge distances
began to separate different groups. But languages were often alike, so
communication between groups wasn’t difficult.
● Agriculture tied groups to a specific property. Scattered populations and highly
regional habits and cultures could be confirmed by the advent of agriculture.
World history in a real sense began on a local level.
● The most obvious lure to pull people away from purely regional interactions
involved goods that could only be obtained through more distant ventures, like
gold or bronze. Contact could also generate knowledge of food products that
might be imported to the benefit of local populations. The opportunity to learn
about basic goods, beyond trade items, could easily spur a quest for wides
ventures. Also, knowledge added to trade and products in motivating
outreach.
Chapter 1: Globalization and the challenge to historical analysis
● In the last few years, globalization has been attacked from different angles.
From the left: globalization promotes systems that threaten progressive goals,
it is economically and environmentally unsustainable. From the right:
globalization tears down the precious values of the nation and has left many
workers unemployed. Globalization enhancement of fundamentalist entities
like ISIS.
● Can the process of globalization be turned?
● Globalization has human meaning.
● The term ‘globalization’ emerged in the 1960s. It was thought that
globalization would produce a different and better world. Q: how new is
globalization compared with previous patterns of contact among societies in
different regions in the world? Also, what caused globalization?
● New global historians believe that recent globalization is a huge change and
claim it began in the 1950s. Another group claims it started in the late 19 th
century. A last group, the world historians, argue that globalization should be
seen as emerging in phases rather than in one burst of innovation.
● Globalization has become one of the defining features of world history but it
emerges from a complex and long-standing process of change.
● The book focuses on four major turning points: around 1000, 1500, 1850 and
in the recent few decades.
● It is important to see globalization in terms of the accumulation of different
patterns of contact, rather than as a single framework.
● Globalization is both an intensification of the range and speed of
contacts among different parts of the world and an expansion of the
kinds of activities intimately involved in global interactions →
explains why global interactions play an increasingly active role in
shaping human lives.
● The pull to separate and the pull to connect go far back in human history.
● By 10,000 BCE, before the advent of agriculture, the roughly 10 million people
in the world had populated virtually all inhabitable areas. Huge distances
began to separate different groups. But languages were often alike, so
communication between groups wasn’t difficult.
● Agriculture tied groups to a specific property. Scattered populations and highly
regional habits and cultures could be confirmed by the advent of agriculture.
World history in a real sense began on a local level.
● The most obvious lure to pull people away from purely regional interactions
involved goods that could only be obtained through more distant ventures, like
gold or bronze. Contact could also generate knowledge of food products that
might be imported to the benefit of local populations. The opportunity to learn
about basic goods, beyond trade items, could easily spur a quest for wides
ventures. Also, knowledge added to trade and products in motivating
outreach.
