GLOBALIZATION

THEN
Some lay importance to the Age of Exploration, when Europeans
AND
in the 1400s set sail across the Atlantic, looking for shorter spice
NOW
routes to China and India. Many mark the voyages of Christopher
Columbus and other sea-faring captains for opening up
commercial trade routes across the world as the beginning of
globalization.

Other scholars view globalization as a far more contemporary

occurrence. Many see it in its current form as a modern
phenomenon, beginning no earlier than World War II. The term
itself has been in common use since the 1980s.

Confusion also stems from the word's use as both a description of

a practice and a political ideology—the latter is frequently used in
a critical sense. Globalization is also frequently used as a synonym
for the solidification and continual creep of American dominance
throughout the world.

Regardless of the differing definitions, at its core, globalization is

the exchange of ideas, capital, and goods across the world, driven
by technology, whether that technology is ships or the Internet.

The Gold Standard

Many historians claim the first wave of globalization began with
the gold standard in the 1800s.6 Even though there was mass
trade across the Atlantic, chartered trading companies, and the
slave industry, there was still no global price convergence at the
time.

Gold had been used as currency for thousands of years from

when man started making gold coins. The value of those gold coins
was worth the value of the gold that made up the coin. It wasn't
until the 1800s that England started fixing the value of its currency
to specified amounts of gold.

Eventually, many countries followed suit or pegged their

currencies to countries that followed the gold standard. Gold,
therefore, became the international standard currency and could
be bought or sold at a fixed price.

The 20th Century

Its purpose is to
After World War II, many nations looked to break down barriers of

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trade between nations, promote free trade, and set up global
organizations. The Bretton Woods Conference in 1944 created the
enjoy.
World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

One view states that globalization cannot be backdated before

the late 1940s—the post-war era when the United States
established itself as the economic powerhouse of the world. This
definition of globalization argues that it is largely the work of
powerful multinational corporations that have created a far-
ranging set of consequences, both positive and negative, as they
spread across the world. The unprecedented ease of travel
around the globe and the development of modern
communications are used to support this view of globalization.

Other scholars claim that the century-long trend toward

globalization actually reversed by the mid-20th century, citing the
collapse of the international economy during the Great
Depression (and the fragmented state of the economy that
persisted through World War II). According to Anne O. Krueger,
former first deputy managing director of the IMF, by 1960,
globalization and the degree of integration of the world economy
was considerably less than it had been fifty years before.