Origins of Globalization - Andrey Korotayev, Leonid Grinin (Academia.edu)

Origins of Globalization

Andrey Korotayev, Leonid Grinin

Academia.edu

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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