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Book Review
| Globalization: A Short History. By JÜRGEN OSTERHAMMEL and NIELS P. PETERSSON. Translated by dona geyer. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005. 182 pp. $22.95 (cloth).
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The 1990s brought a worldwide awareness of the macroprocess termed "globalization"—everywhere people looked they "saw" globalization happening: global connections, interconnections, and disconnections. It was seemingly happening all around them—economically, culturally, and environmentally—and, as shown in Globalization: A Short History, the patterns have been developing over centuries. The buzzword "globalization" gives a term to the many conflicting and interconnected processes at work throughout the world; "in a single word, this term summarizes a wide spectrum of experiences shared by many people" (p. 2). Identifying and charting the historical integrative processes that have led to this global age of convergence and divergence, the authors, Jürgen Osterhammel and Niels Petersson, concisely place the emergence of these global processes in the High Middle Ages, occurring, progressing, and moving at different rates and intensities throughout the world. |
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Indeed, in providing a brief history of globalization, the authors offer the reader a succinct yet illuminative historical perspective of the bundled globalizing processes as they have occurred and developed over time. By focusing readers' attention on frameworks of integration that have emerged in different eras, the authors are able to concisely demonstrate that globalization is not a phenomenon that has recently emerged within the confines of the twentieth century, but rather has emerged through interrelated groupings and globalizing tendencies that date back to the High Middle Ages at different intensities. Beginning truly with the European overseas expansions that led to large-scale colonization and state-building, the book claims that globality emerged in different areas at dissimilar intensities. This book outlines these emergences and effectively provides an understanding of the frameworks within which globalization has taken place throughout the world. |
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