A Brief History of Globalization: The Untold Story of Our Incredible Shrinking Planet

by MacGillivray, Alex

• ISBN13: 9780786717101
• ISBN10: 0786717106
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-01-09
• Publisher: Perseus Books Group

Summary

Globalization is one of the most overused and least understood words in the world today. For Tony Blair it is "inevitable and irresistible." To deny it, says Nelson Mandela, is "like saying I do not recognize winter." The accelerating political, economic, cultural and environmental interconnections that it describes are powerful and controversial. But what does it really mean?

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	p. xi
Introduction	p. 1
Defining globalization - scope and intent	p. 4
What is to come	p. 7
Globalization: the biography of a word	p. 10
The global tipping point?	p. 15
The Iberian carve-up (1490-1500)	p. 19
The Britannic meridian (1880-90)	p. 19
Sputnik World (1955-65)	p. 20
The global supply-chain (1995-2005)	p. 20
Thermo-globalization	p. 21
The nature of the beast	p. 24
Global Intent	p. 26
Global thinking	p. 27
Inflating the globe	p. 28
Back to Babylon	p. 33
The world through other eyes	p. 36
The strange emergence of European global intent	p. 42
The carve-up	p. 46
The Planet-Shrinkers	p. 52
The little apple	p. 52
Split down the middle	p. 55
Getting round in one piece	p. 60
The figure of the globe	p. 65
Globe-trotting: the age of lightning travel	p. 78
Get into orbit	p. 82
Knowing the globe	p. 88
Goods: the Globalization of Luxury	p. 92
Some like it hot	p. 92
Medieval massala	p. 95
Botanical outsourcing	p. 102
Everyday luxury: the rise of mass consumption	p. 108
The benevolent butcher	p. 111
The 'golden age' of global trade	p. 117
The 'platinum age' of global supply-chains	p. 121
The global corporation: fact or fiction?	p. 125
Spice of life	p. 135
Muscle: Planet on the Move	p. 141
Early migrations - from Swindon to Sweden (100,000BC-AD1500)	p. 143
One tonne per life: sugar and slaves	p. 146
The great migration (1820-1900)	p. 151
Red rubber: the cost of inner tubes and the pursuit of world peace	p. 158
The decimated globe (1914-50)	p. 164
Hyper-mobile planet (1950-2005)	p. 172
Juice: Money, Oil and the Global Casino	p. 186
From barter and cowries to sovereigns and dollars	p. 188
Gold and bubbles (1719-1929)	p. 195
Tarnished globe (1914-48)	p. 204
The Bretton Woods System (1944-71)	p. 210
'Greed is global' (1973-2005)	p. 216
The climate casino (1973-2005)	p. 226
A World of Ideas: Religion, Language, Culture and Communication	p. 235
Football: the world's language	p. 236
The late fifteenth-century contraction	p. 241
The late nineteenth-century contraction	p. 242
Phoney globalization (1920s-40s)	p. 251
The Sputnik contraction (1950s-60s)	p. 253
The emergence of global culture?	p. 257
Small world: the coming global contraction	p. 264
The Incredible Shrinking Planet	p. 273
Will the real planet-shrinkers please step forward?	p. 275
The limits to globalization: how far has it got; how far can it go?	p. 280
Is globalization a good thing? Winners, losers and the missing middle	p. 285
Can globalization be managed?	p. 289
Further Reading	p. 293
Notes	p. 301
Index	p. 327
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