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In this article we analyze processes and scales of global integration in
historical perspective, starting with the Agrarian Revolution. We connect the
main phases of historical globalization with the processes of the development
of the Afroeurasian world-system. In the framework of the Afroeurasian
world-system the integration began several millennia BCE. In it the continental
and supracontinental links became so developed long before the Great Geographic
Discoveries and thus they could well be denoted as global (albeit in a somehow
limited sense). Among some researchers there is still a tendency to
underestimate the scale of those links in the pre-Industrial era; thus, it
appeared necessary to provide additional empirical support for our statement.
It also turned necessary to apply a special methodology (which necessitated the
use of the world-system approach). We analyze some versions of periodization of
globalization history. We also propose our own periodization of the
globalization history basing on the growth of the scale of intersocietal links
as an indicator of the level of globalization development. On Goals and Tasks
of the Article In the framework of this article we attempt to solve the
following tasks:
1) to demonstrate that it was already a few thousand years ago (at least
since the formation of the system of long-distance large-scale trade in metals
in the 4th millennium BCE) when the scale of systematic trade relationships
overgrew significantly the local level and became regional (and even
transcontinental in a certain sense);
2) to show that already in the late 1st millennium BCE the scale of
processes and links within the Afroeurasian world-system did not only exceed
the regional level, it did not only reach the continental level, but it also
went beyond continental limits.
That is why we contend that
within this system marginal systemic contacts between agents of various levels
(from societies to individuals) may be defined as transcontinental (note that
here we are dealing not with overland contacts only, as since the late 1st
millennium BCE in some cases we confront oceanic contacts – the most salient
case is represented here by the Indian Ocean communication network.
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