Early History of Globalization

There is many controversies about beginnings and character of the process. We can notice two streams in the way of thinking, first one states that globalisation is the next more complicated stage of the international relations evolution. Second claims that this event is completely new in the world policy caused by the factors that did not occur ever before. Now we will try to describe and understand both of these streams.

Like we mentioned above most people think that globalisation is the new event in today’s world but that is not necessarily true. Many interested in topic finds the roots of “globalisation” (it is hard to believe that this term was used to name events happened hundreds years ago) in middle ages or even before. Although expansion of Christianity at the beginning of new age or expansion of Islam in VIII-IX centaury had an enormous impact on the “globalized” world, the most important were Columb’s, Vasco da Gama’s, Magellan’s discoveries in XV-XVI c. - it was time for the civilisation clash. In this period in world history the capitalism has its roots. Geographical discoveries, colonization, slave traffic, trade and many more aspects were consequently creating basics of economical cooperation between western Europe‘s states and rest of the world as well.

Next, in the enlightenment period came time for the liberalism, which helped to disable feudal limitations and privileges. Liberal ideas quickly became very popular, especially in upper class industrial societies. English liberalised trading system with the British colonies in the middle of XIX c. It was the end of large monopolistic companies for a while. Because of the fact that The Navigation Act finally expired, all the English harbours were open not only for national fleet but for the foreigners as well. Later in history came time for the industrial and technical improvements in Europe, United States and rest of the world (on different levels of course). At this stage it is worth to say a little bit about international and intercontinental migrations. Between 1871-1910 number of immigrants came to the US reached 20 millions, another 3 mlns came to Canada, 2,5 mlns to Brasil and over 6 mlns found their homes in Australia. How does it look nowadays? Accurate measurement of international migration on the global scale (or only in Europe for example) is totally impossible because of the fact that there are many definitions and manners to