If anything seems obvious today, it is that globalization is a new and powerful force that is erasing national borders and linking the world in an unprecedented web of trade and investments. But that was Baron Carl Meyer von Rothschild, in 1875, reacting as stock markets tumbled all around the world, in unison, feeding off each other. Perhaps the greatest myth about globalization is that it is new. By some measures, its peak occurred a century ago, making the 20th century memorable in economic history mostly for its retreat from globalization. In some respects, only now is the world economy becoming roughly as interlinked as it was more than a century ago.
Labor is less mobile than it was in the last century.
In those days, passports were unnecessary and people could travel freely from one country to the next, to visit or to work. That mobility led 60 million Europeans to move to the Americas or Australia or elsewhere, and it helped fill up the United States. It's not just labor. The 1860's and 1870's were a golden era for free trade, and goods moved easily across borders. As late as 1879 an astonishing 95 percent of Germany's imports were still free of duty.