Chapter One: Globalization: An Agenda for Historians

By: A.G. Hopkins

In this chapter, the author highlights the face that, globalization is the multivocal and
indeterminate concept that has emerged as the most popular means of understanding the avowed
transformation of global order at the turn of the twenty-first century . The notion to discover the
great convergence model of civilization arises after the slow, fixed and divided Cold War
system that has dominated world politics since 1945 has ended, replaced by a new
interconnected system called globalization. Thus according to A.G Hopkins, this concept
emerged in the 1990s as the preferred term for encompassing the multiplicity of supranational
forces that have imprinted themselves on the contemporary world, and it seems likely to remain
in use, and probably in overuse, in the foreseeable future. In effect, capitalist triumphalism is
confronted by an emerging civic conscience that makes global claims of its own behalf of the
poor and the oppressed, thus providing evidence of a growing concern with the adverse
consequences of globalization and an allied disillusion with representative government.
These developments have therefore provided historians with the exceptional opportunity
to enter the most important single debate in social sciences: the analysis of the origins, nature,
and consequences of globalization. Thus the economic, political and sociological literation on
this phenomenon lies readily at hand. The author points out the fact that, postmodernism has also
helped to narrow the range of inquiry though in different ways and as such the main purpose of
the book is to suggest that it is time to record these priorities by giving the study of globalization
a prominent place in the agenda of historical research. The studies that follow run counter to the
dominant assumption of the existing literature, which holds that globalization is the product of
the West and its center form, the United States in particular. But the aim though the book has
been to prevent the history of globalization from becoming simply the story of the rise of the
West and the fall of the rest under another name.

By: NKWAH Akongnwi NGWA

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On the question whether globalization is a product of the contemporary world or has

origins that stretch into the distant past is fully recognized by the current literature, even though
it has been put by social scientist and by current historians, the author asserts that, historically
globalization has taken different forms, which we have categorized as archaic, proto, modern,
and postcolonial. Thus today as in the past, globalization remains an incomplete process: it
promotes fragmentation as well as uniformity, it may recede as well as advance, its geographical
scope way exhibit a strong regional bias; its future direction and speed cannot be predicted with
confidence and certainly not by presuming that it has an inner logic of its own.
A.G. Hopkins, distinguishes and examines the various categories of globalization that
existed: archaic, proto, modern as well as post-colonial globalization. Thus in his analyses, he
refers archaic globalization to the form that was present before industrialization and the nation
state made their appearance, thus it covers a very broad swath of history. It was sea-borne as well
as land based, and it was particularly promoted by great premodern empires from the Byzantium
and Tang to the renewed expansionism of the Islamic and Christian powers at the 1500. Hence
the strongest affiliation between them was both universal and local, as well as the junction
between them was found most notably in the development of cities, connections between farflung cities were made by mobile diasporic networks and migrants of all kinds. The limits to the
effective authority of the state, combined with the powerful presence of universal belief systems,
notably Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity, encouraged the movement of ideas and
with them people and goods across the regions and continents. To this effect, archaic
globalization thus exhibited some strikingly Modern Features such as the important of cities,
the part played by migrants and diaspora, and specialization of labor e.t.c but it did not extern to
the Americas and Australasia.
As concerns the proto-globalization, according to the author, it refers two interacting
political and economic developments that became especially prominent between 1600 and 1800
in Europe, Asia and part of Africa. That is the reconfiguration of the state systems and the growth
of finance, services and preindustrial manufacturing. The political and the economic came
together most visibly in complementary but ultimate competing systems of military fiscalism.

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These contributions made it clear that the rise of the rise of the West ws complemented by the
developments in other parts of the world. Europe headed by Britain extended its connections
with the wider world in the second half of the 18 th century. Thus the 1760s formed a
globalization decade that not only witnessed the start of renewed commercial expansion and
fresh wave of imperial acquisitions but also inaugurated a knowledge revolution that mapped,
surveyed and classified the world of the contact and conquest. As such, in structure, scale and
geographical reach, proto-globalization was a departure from its archaic precursor. But it had
limits that cause it to fall short of the requirements of its modern successor.
With modern globalization, the author conventionally defines it by the appearance of two
key elements about 1800: the rise of the nation state and the spread of industrialization. The
sovereign state based of territorial boundaries was filled in by developing a wider and deeper
sense of national consciousness and filled out, variously, by population growth, free trade,
imperialism, and war. These developments brought global influences into the more confined
sphere of international relations. Overseas expansion nationalized the new internationalism by
exporting national constitutions and religious and by extending national economies to distant
parts of the world. As such, reciprocally, these exports played an important part in consolidating
the nation states that promoted them. Thus the new international order was created partly by
persuasion and partly by command: free trade delivered one, empire the other. New states,
independent and colonial, sprang up in the 19 th and 20th centuries, with land being everywhere
converted into property, and property becoming the foundation of sovereignty. As the 19 th
century advanced, regions producing raw materials were integrated with manufacturing centers
of Europe and international trade, finance and migration experienced an unprecedented, if also
irregular, expansion.
The imperial expression of modern globalization on its part gave rise to two main
strategies of control: assimilation and association. The continuities where striking everywhere
because the European empires were built on the archaic foundations and proto-globalizing
tendencies of the societies they subordinated. Hence, the diasporas of Southeast Asia, the
structure and evolution of colonialism itself were heavily influenced by the resilience and

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continuing dynamism of indigenous institutions as well as the rise of various Self

strengthening movements that sought to turn Western knowledge to local advantage, influence
these strategies. In this way, the extension of nationalism that reached the rest of the world as
imperial rule or imperial influence was itself domesticated, thus helping to bring the phase of
globalization to an end and pointing the way albeit uncertainly, to another.
A.G. Hopkins , highlights the fact that, we use the term postcolonial globalization to refer
to contemporary form that can be dated, approximately, from the 1950s. By the mid-20 th century,
the modern and modernizing empires that had taken over or taken part of their archaic
predecessors had themselves fallen. As such, new types of supra-territorial organization and new
forms of regional integration had begun to make their appearance. By the close of the 20 th
century, the nation state had ceased to be the unquestioned vehicle of progress and in some cases
had begun to unravel at times spectacularly. Ex-colonial states were under pressure to make
concessions to ethnic and provincial claimants; internal disorder was common, even where
formal boundaries remained in place. The world economy had experienced a profound
realignment: the exchange of manufactures for raw materials that had underpinned the modern
phase of globalization was replaced by pattern of integration based on inter-industry trade. These
developments, as is well known, bear the strong imprint of the United States.
Thus the American Century provided by David Reynolds, explaining why
globalization has achieved such unprecedented reach and depth. With the shape of the world
order being more that usually in transition and its boundaries of the global village being fluid,
it is clear that its inhabitants are highly mobile. Thus the tyranny of distance has been overcome
and isolation eliminated. Hence, neither history nor ideology has come to an end, and the
advocates of capitalism and free trade see globalization as a positive, progressive force
generating employment and ultimately raising living standards throughout the world. Critics
view this as a means of expropriating the resources of poor countries by drawing them into debt,
encouraging the use of sweated labor, and accelerating environmental degradation.

By: NKWAH Akongnwi NGWA

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