The Value of Military History

Part 1: What is Globalization? Part 2: Debate: Is it good or bad? Theme: The positive and negative impacts of globalization

• Lsn 36

Origins of Global Interdependence

• People had long interacted with each other based on established trade routes such as the Silk Roads and the trans-Sahara caravan routes
• In the 1400s the process was accelerated when European mariners began exploring sea routes to the markets in Asia
• The result were globe-girdling networks that supported cross-cultural interactions much more systematic and intense than those of early years
• By 1500 peoples of the world had established intricate transportation networks that supported travel, communication, and exchange between societies

The Change in Scope

• Before 1500, contact between people of the eastern hemisphere, western hemisphere, and Oceania had only sporadic contact with each other
• From 1500 to 1800, networks linked all the world’s religions and peoples
• From 1800 to the present, national states, heavy industry, powerful weapons, and efficient technologies of transportation and communication enabled “the West” to achieve political and economic dominance in the world

European Exploration

Global Exchanges

• Biological
• Plants, animals, diseases, and human communities crossed the world’s oceans and established themselves in new lands where they dramatically affected both the natural environment and established societies
• Commercial
• Diffusion of technologies and cultural traditions

Spread of the Bubonic Plague

Probable Early Diffusion of AIDS (Adapted from The Geography of AIDS, Shannon, Pyle, and Bashsur)

Global Exchanges

• Biological
• Commercial
• Merchants took advantage of newly established sea lanes to inaugurate a genuinely global economy in which agricultural products, manufactured goods, and other commodities reached markets in distant lands
• Diffusion of technologies and cultural traditions

Spread of Horses Among Plains Indian Tribes

Global Exchanges

• Biological
• Commercial
• Diffusion of technologies and cultural traditions
• The world-wide spread of printing impacted knowledge, gunpowder impacted war, and religion impacted beliefs.

Clash of Civilizations

• “The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural… The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.”
• The result will be “The West versus the Rest.”
• Samuel Huntington, “Clash of Civilizations?” Foreign Affairs, Summer 1993

Huntington’s Civilizations

• Western

• Latin American

• Islamic

• Slavic-Orthodox

• Sinic

• Hindu

• African

• Japanese

Debate: Is globalization good or bad?

• Global inequality
• Free trade
• Communications technology
• Power
• Culture

Why is there global inequality, and is it getting worse?

• Pro: Globalization opens up new opportunities for developing countries, and only those countries who have not embraced world trade have suffered.
• Con: Globalization has made the rich, richer and the poor, poorer.

What are the costs and the benefits of free trade?

• Pro: Free trade reduces prices for consumers and creates jobs in developing countries.
• Con: Free trade has primarily meant that global corporations now are able to exploit foreign markets in terms of cheaper labor, low worker protections, and looser environmental regulations. In the US, this has cost workers their jobs as production moves overseas.

What is the role of the internet and communications technology in globalization?

• Pro: The internet ensures everyone has access to information.
• Con: The predominance of English on the internet threatens other languages and cultures, and transnational corporations have made the internet a tool for disseminating their marketing information to the global economy.

Is globalization shifting power from nation states to undemocratic organizations?

• Pro: Nation states will always be the center of the international system because they control territory and military power. International governmental organizations are made up of individual nation states so the nation state is in fact represented.
• Con: Under globalization, international organizations such as the World Trade Organization and NGOs have increased in power at the expense of nation states. Some global corporations have greater assets than the GDPs of some nations. These powerful organizations are not democratically elected and make decisions behind closed doors.

How does globalization affect culture? Is it ‘Americanization’?

• Pro: There is no way a world of over 6 billion people can become a monoculture. In fact, some forces of globalization such as the internet can be used to project traditional cultures in a way previously impossible.
• Con: America dominates the world economy to such an extent that mass distribution of its products have negatively impacted global cultural diversity.

So……….

• Is globalization good or bad?

Next

• Final Exam Review