Globalization: A Short History
If globalization represents a "new historical epoch," it must, as this text asserts, have its origins in a history extending much further back than the recent past. With this concise and insightful work, Osterhammel and Peterson, who both teach history at the University of Konstanz, seek to provide a brief account of just that history. With analytical precision, they trace the evolution of globalization from its "prehistory" in pre-modern civilization to its possible "golden age" in the mid-1970s. Their analysis emphasizes economic developments over cultural and political events. When they discuss the "double" French and Industrial revolutions of the late 18th century, for example, they focus decidedly on the latter; similarly, their narrative of the early Cold War spends a great deal of time on the rise and fall of the Bretton Woods agreement yet only briefly mentions the Korean War. Still, given the authors' belief that globalization represents the increasing power of the market over the nation-state, that bias is largely understandable. While the book is dense and academic-one can easily imagine college students taking notes on it in a library-it offers a compelling historical introduction to a contentious and significant concept.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.