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Book Review
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Hopkins, A.G., editor. Globalization in World History (W.W. Norton,
2002). 263 pp, $22.05.
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This book is essential for all high school
and college instructors who teach the World History survey because it examines
globalization in its full historical context. The authors argue that globalization
took four different forms over the past three centuries: archaic (the era
before industrialization and the nation-state); proto-industrialization
(1600-1800); modern (1800: industrialization and the rise of the nation-state);
and post-colonial (1950 to present). These periods are not fixed, but rather
overlap and interact with each other. By categorizing globalization in this
manner, the authors have eliminated the tendency to perceive globalization
as simply the "rise of the West," but rather as "a truly
global history of globalization." (p. 3) Thus, the eleven chapters
which comprise this volume emphasize the contribution of non-Western forms
of globalization over the ages.
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A. G. Hopkins, the editor, calls on historians
to become fully engaged in the topic of globalization, which has heretofore
been left to economists, political scientists, and sociologists. Unlike
other studies on globalization, this book claims to be the first "written
entirely by historians." (p. 2). Cambridge University funded the collaborative
project that was written, primarily, by Cambridge faculty. Scholars who
favor global topics, connections, and cross-cultural encounters will especially
appreciate chapter one, "Globalization ¨ An Agenda for Historians"
and chapter two, "The History of Globalization and the Globalization
of History?" These chapters, both written by Hopkins, offer historians
new ideas for fruitful areas of research such as the historian's unique
ability to argue for or against the novelty of globalization, as well as
the opportunity for world historians to frame new questions about history. |
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Unlike many collections of disparate essays
that tout a shared theme, the eleven essays in this book actually achieve
the promise of cohesiveness. For example, in chapter three, C.A. Bayly argues
that the agents of archaic globalization‹tribal leaders, sea-borne merchant
communities, and land caravans‹should be seen as integral dimensions of
the later Euro-American dominated world economy. He goes on to say that
the elements of proto-globalization, chiefly the emergence of the Atlantic
plantation system, subsumed all older economic mechanisms through expanded
markets and consumption. Non-Europeans, he argues, were active participants
in this process. In chapter four, Amira Bennison also investigates a non-Western
world-system, the Islamic world, as a precursor and contributor to contemporary
globalization. She examines the "universalizing elements" of Islam,
such as the umma (the universal Muslim community) and the Arabic
language, which "had a profound influence across the Islamic lands
and acted as a vehicle for archaic Muslim globalization." (p. 75). |
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In chapter five, Richard Drayton focuses on
human labor‹"the key to globalizations" (p. 100)‹in the early
modern Atlantic world, while a chapter by Tony Ballantyne (chapter six)
argues that cultural aspects of globalization, such as the spread of knowledge,
merits greater attention by historians. Hans van de Ven (chapter eight)
explores the underside of globalization from the perspective of the Southern
hemisphere, including a clear sense of the global past: slavery, conquest,
underdevelopment, and cultural annihilation. John Lonsdale (chapter nine)
highlights a problem with writing world history as the "rise of the
West." Such a framework, he argues, ignores the linkages created between
China, Southeast Asia, and Japan long before "the arrival of the West
and the importance of these to the development of European empires, providing,
for instance, the largest market for Spanish silver" (p. 170). In chapter
ten, A.G. Hopkins examines commonalities between modern and post-colonial
globalization in two discrete regions: Bali and Labrador. |
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The last chapter in this collection, David
Reynold's "American Globalization: Mass, Motion, and the Multiplier
Effect," examines the historical roots of American globalization in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries through its connections to the
proto-globalization of the Atlantic world, and in the nineteenth century
via the economic and political integration of the Union. Reynolds persuasively
argues that twentieth- century American globalism was distinctive because
of the United States' ability to exploit modern technologies. It did so,
he argues, through mass, motion, and the multiplier effect. "Mass"
refers to both the "age of masses" (democratic politics, consumer
economies, and popular culture) and the sheer size and stability of the
United States in the twentieth century. During this time, mass destruction,
mass consumption, and mass culture were all achieved through the motion
of mass production and mass communications. This American globalization
was historically distinct, argues Reynolds, because an enormous unified
entity "mobilized globally through the unprecedentedly large multiplier
effect of modern technologies" (p. 263). By placing contemporary American
globalization in its historical context, dimensions other than economics
are given their due consideration. Reynolds highlights the political and
social frameworks that buttressed American globalization as well as the
relationship between national and international developments. |
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Globalization in World History supports
earlier works that identify non-Western "world-systems" earlier
that 1500 A.D., such as Janet Abu-Lughod's Before European Hegemony
or K.N. Chaudhuri's Asia Before Europe. The volume is an important
contribution to world history because the authors assess the past from a
global, rather than national, perspective. It calls upon historians to contribute
to the current debate on globalization and, furthermore, it asks what the
discussion on globalization can add to historical inquiry in general. This
question underscores the merits of world history scholarship, which features
methods and approaches that promote alternative ways of assessing the past
from a non-national perspective. |
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Mary Jane Maxwell
Washington State University
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