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Summary: Globalization in World History: Chapter 7
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Summary of the book: Globalization in World History, by Peter Stearns. Contains Chapter 7
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Chapter 7: The 1850s as a Turning PointA Novel choice?
● A growing group of historians specifically interested in globalization place the
effective origins of the phenomenon in the middle of the 19th century.
● This early era of globalization was fueled not only by new steamships but also
the two great world canals of Suez and Panama boosted this process.
Breakthroughs in communication, in the form of telegraph lines —> faster
commercial interactions and exchanges of news.
● Period of 1750 or 1789 until 1914 = dubbed “the long 19th century” by
historian Eric Hobsbawm, focusing mainly on the rise of industrialization and
also the blossoming of Western imperialism.
● Taking 1850 as a breaking point thereby seems odd. But the most important
stages of Industrialization really gained global importance only after 1850.
● World War 1 encouraged some powerful countercurrents to globalization in
the form of nationalist and regional reactions seeking to limit globalization’s
impact and develop alternative economic structures. WW1 is a break, but it
paused rather than reversed the basic mechanisms of globalization.
New Technologies and Systems
● Transportation evolved from the development of the steamship.
Communication was revolutionized through the telegraph. —> Global
interaction and —> a new level of connection: in trade, but also in patterns of
immigration, dissemination of news, etc.
● Steamships were developed in the early 19th century, but it wasn’t focused on
trade: fuel use was high, pace quite low and machines were vulnerable. Gains
in speed came from a new ship, the Clipper, developed by Americans and
used for global trade. —> Dramatic reduction of travel time.
● 1850: use of steel instead of wood provided a firmer basis for the engines
themselves, largely eliminating leakage. The replacement of paddle-wheels
by screw propellors = important as well. Larger, more efficient engines were
soon developed around this time. —> longer distances, shorter travel times.
—> travel costs dropped —> more commerce and passenger travel.
● Trains and steamships also began to open interior regions to growing global
trade and contact: steamships allowed riverboats to move upstream in places
like Africa and China, —> European military penetration & encouraging of
trade. Many rail lines were built to link internal production regions to coast
ports and facilitate exports. Coastal connections —> greater production of
export products.
● Invention of the telegraph in 1837 —> transoceanic linkages among all the
continents. 1901: wireless radio connections across the Atlantic are
introduced. Range and speed of communication intensify.
● 1859: Suez canal , linking the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, was finished.
The effective distance between India and Europe was cut in half. —> It was
an immediate success.
● The Panama Canal project began at the end of the 19th century, under
guidance of the US. I twas finished in 1914. It proved vital in connecting Asian
exports to US markets.
, ● Both canals stimulated further global contacts
Toward Freer Trade and Imperialism
● European powers, led by GB moved toward a pattern of reducing tariffs on
foreign goods, on the assumption that freer trade would ultimately benefit all
participants.
● Britain began turning toward this policy in the 1830s.
● Besides this, European and US imperialists began to apply to other countries
toward opening their markets more fully, pressuring China, Japan and Korea.
● Western nations rivaled each other for the upper hand. Each imperial power
tried to reserve the best pickings for its own nationals. But Western control
was resented and for example in China, international involvement was long
kept to a minimum because of the association with Western control. —>
Rivalries and hostilities qualified the embrace of the new global technologies
and policies.
● New speed and new contacts —> more open policies, more interaction —>
trade and migration took on additional contours and greatly expanded in
volume. Suggestions of a new, global culture emerged. But all this depended
on the technologies and policies that made these changes happen.
Trade and International Business
● The main purpose of improved transportation and related policies: enhancing
global trade. 1851: GB opens the first international trade exposition, the
Crystal Palace exhibition. It showed industrial improvements from all over the
world, ultimately mainly from the British Empire. —> From then on, world
exhibitions occurred about every 5 years, creating great fanfare for the idea of
a global economic community.
● Historian Kevin O’Rourke claims that mid-19th century must be seen as the
launch of modern globalization because of the magnitude of world trade
growth. The total value of all exports and imports, worldwide, quintupled
between the 1850s and 1900. Besides GB, Germany, France, US and others
also began to get into the game. World trade expanded by 4% per year in the
last half of the 19th century, a mark never achieved before.
● Trade in modern weapons played an important part in this explosion of trade.
US became a major weapons supplier.
● Growing international trade —> expansion of international companies. Two
developments play a part. Large companies now set up supply bases in
nonindustrial areas, acquiring huge local influence and also expanding
international sales operations for their finished products. Western firms set up
large mining/agricultural holdings in Latin America and Africa, while
influencing the politics of governments. Second development: Western
companies setting up production plants in various parts of the world, taking
advantage of technological knowhow while seeking to squeeze out potential
local competitors and reducing shipping costs.
● Expansion of trade, banking and international business —> emergence of
international economic trading crises. Traditionally, economic oscillations
depended on regional factors like bad harvests. These only had limited global
repercussions. This changed by the late 19th century. Now, economic crises
resulted from speculative over investments by banks —> withdrawal of credit
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