A Historical Perspective on Globalization

[Dol Guldur]

Neo-liberal free market? I assume by neo-liberal you refer to liberals of today, who are quite opposite to the classical liberals of the past (such as the Founders of the US and the traditional English libertarians)? Neo-liberals do not believe in a free market.

Globalization in modern terms, though spoken of in economic terms often, has an undercurrent of political force to it. Namely the regionalization or creation of "blocs" (EU, NAFTA, etc.) with a view to estalishing a world government of some kind.

I would argue that prosperity and progress has come largely by independence, by countries acting independently but on friendly mutual terms (eg. USA andf UK) rather than by force (either by war or by the creation of supranationalist entities or empires). There are many examples of this, and I believe Adam Smith mentions them; and of course the US put those ideals into practice and flourished greatly because of them until it started messing around with things (fix'n something that was not broke) in the early 20th Century.

So globalization is perhaps a term that could encompass all, but I think a perspective of antiquity would be a good idea. But how much you dwell on the political and not just the social/economic/cultural would be interesting to see, the two will surely overlap. Rome would be my obvious choice in terms of the political/military.

[Yyrkoon]

"Neo-liberal free market? I assume by neo-liberal you refer to liberals of today, who are quite opposite to the classical liberals of the past (such as the Founders of the US and the traditional English libertarians)? Neo-liberals do not believe in a free market."

Actually Neo-liberals are generally thought of as free market libertarians that support such institutions as the WTO and regional (and eventually world) free trade zones. I'm not 100% sure where the "neo" comes from. I suppose it's to distinguish them from political left-liberals.

So far I'm really liking three of the suggestions and once I've done a preliminary scan of sources, I'll list up a few and see if there are suggestions for more or better ones to consult. I think I'm going to lean towards shorter sources if only because the semester is setting itself up to be quite punishing.