World societies, especially large scale societies, have almost always been global to some extent, with people trading and interacting over most of the globe for a long time. So any kind of modern periodisation is bound to be inaccurate. Think of this post as an experiment, and please offer corrections.
One set of modern periodisations can be described as Colonisation, Post Colonial and Neoliberal:
First Period: Colonisation and Imperialism from about the 16th Century.
In this period, globalisation largely exists in terms of benefit for the coloniser/conqueror, and depends on the relative military strength and fast transport developed in the West, and a ruthless and expansionary politics, brought about by an apparent need to increase access to resources, and a relative peace and stability amongst the dominant groups in European countries (particularly after the mid 17th Century) which helped reduce the internal feudal battles for land.
This form of globalisation involves mass movements of people both forced and relatively voluntary. First there is the collaboration of European merchants and Islamic slavers boosting the African slave trade, at the demand of the Europeans, almost unimaginably and, at a lesser level, Europeans using transported convicts and indentured labour to work ‘new’ conquered lands. Consequently, there is massive dispossession of people from their traditional lands, both in the Europe (particularly the UK with the enclosure movement dispossessing traditional farmers into the cities) and much more harshly in the Americas with the destruction and plunder of South and North American Civilisations. Many of the people dispossessed in Europe moved to the conquered lands, as there seemed only a miserable future at home, and further occupy or steal those lands. Some suggest this era sees the birth of ‘white racism’, as the conquerors needed a justification for the theft, and to prevent conversion of slaves meaning they were now part of Christendom and no longer slaves.
In summary, this period is fueled by violent theft, dispossession, slavery, plunder of gold, silver and land in the Americas, eventually moving on to theft elsewhere such as in Africa, or India, in the latter case, largely through the depredations of the East India Company and the British Government, officially trying to reign in the company. The period ends in the First World War, some suggest because the European powers had run out of planet to despoil, and is largely destroyed by the Second World War.
Second Period: post-Colonialism, post-WWII globalism
This short period is entwined with the ‘Cold War’, ‘developmentalism’, ‘modernisation’, and ‘socialism’ with developmentalism being welcomed on all sides of politics, and begins to come to an end with the oil shock and stagflation in the 1970s. This can also be considered to be the post-colonial period with many places regaining independence, while still being overshadowed by the effects of the previous period.
Basically, throughout the world, the Western US model dominated, even the communist states seemed to think that American life was worthy of emulation. This was the era of ‘scientific management’, which led in some cases to ‘accidental’ disasters such as the ‘green revolution’ or the growing of monocrops with artificial fertilisers, insecticides, and dispossession of small farmers in favour of industrial agriculture. The era consolidates progress towards the contemporary ecological crisis, but at the same raised considerable opposition and popular left wing movements against corporate domination, which had to be stopped before they threatened dominant interests. The new post-colonial states also sought to become a movement independent of the West and the oil shock can be seen as partly about showing the West it did not run everything any more. There were relatively large scale movements of colonised people into the the colonising states, which slowly began to be used to provoke internal tensions, and slow down socialism.
Third Period: The Triumph of Neoliberalism,
During the 1980s, neoliberalism began to become dominant, mostly as a solution to popular radicalism, with a kind of leave-it-to-efficient-markets globalism or the ‘Washington consensus’. However, this consensus was rejected by some successful Asian States such as Singapore. This third stage resulted in the return of financial instability, growing national inequality and increasing power for large scale business. Most places were now trapped in a global market run for business, and held to strict rules of expenditure (especially if they had debt). Sovereignty of small states was precarious because of these rules. Popular socialism was suppressed and effectively died. Mainstream left wing political parties moved to the right, to gain corporate funding. Despite growing knowledge of the ecological and climate crisis and agreements aimed at stopping the destruction, companies and governments continued the practices that boosted destruction and profit.
A left-wing anti-globalist movement developed which was opposed to the corporate and market dominance of the world, and the apparent inability of democratic states to curtail corporate power. This later mutated into the Global Justice Movement, which largely collapsed in the 2000s.
The power of globalism may well have led into a boosting of national social categories as a form of defense mechanism. Fundamentalist Islam became global (partly in response to western warfare in the middle east), as did growing nationalism and purity movements, and right-wing Christian evangelism. Right wing anti-globalisation took off in the 2010s – the popular forms aiming to boost national sovereignty, tighten borders and defend nationalist social categories, in a form of retreat or defense of the home from global pressures. The more elite forms of right wing anti-globalisation take advantage of this movement with the aim of removing any democratic governance of corporations, allocation of responsibility to corporations, remove countries from international agreements and responsibilities (such as preventing US citizens for being tried for war crimes), and to weaken national sovereignty through agreements like the Energy Charter Treaty, except when nationalism acts to get people supporting them.
A significant technological change in this era, building upon colonialism, was speed of transport. At the beginning of the second period, most people still moved across the globe by ship, by the third period, this moved into air transport. Electronic communication began in the second period, but came into popular usage in this period, linking people all over the globe, building new alliances, new conflicts, and furthering both new forms of knowledge and ignorance, while allowing the quick global transfer of money – which fostered new forms of speculative trading, and new forms of financial peril. The speed of transport boosted the likelihood of pandemic explosions, but this was largely held in check until COVID-19.
The era muddied on through completely unnecessary wars such as GW Bush’s war on Iraq – supposedly in response to the 9/11 attacks, and against truly massive popular opposition which was completely ignored. This war did not bring glory as intended, but (as predicted by many) massively destabilised the “Middle East,” as large numbers of people (possibly millions) living in the area were maimed or killed and societies rendered precarious and vulnerable to fundamentalist warfare. The war lost the USA much power and status, as well as costing billions of dollars and distracting from its real challenges. The wars overlapped with the financial crisis, dispossession of US home owners, and the taxpayer rescue of inefficient and corrupt companies, adding further stress and weakness to the USA as well, which helped compound the destabilisation.
We are still in this third phase, but it is changing with the growing dominance of China, and the growing decay of stability and consensus in the US, the apparent running down of the EU with Brexit, and the failure by anyone in the world to deal with Climate Change, Covid or economic instability.
Conclusion
Whatever the violence of the causes, and whatever happens in the future, we are now in a thoroughly global word. Wherever we humans live, we cannot be isolated from what happens in the rest of the world, and so need to pay attention to it, whether we wish to withdraw into our own borders and cultures, as a form of security, or not. The world stands together or falls apart.
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