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"Globalization" has become a popular buzzword for explaining today's world. The expression achieved terminological stardom in the 1990s and was soon embraced by the general public and integrated into numerous languages.
But is this much-discussed phenomenon really an invention of modern times? In this work, Jürgen Osterhammel and Niels Petersson make the case that globalization is not so new, after all. Arguing that the world did not turn "global" overnight, the book traces the emergence of globalization over the past seven or eight centuries. In fact, the authors write, the phenomenon can be traced back to early modern large-scale trading, for example, the silk trade between China and the Mediterranean region, the shipping routes between the Arabian Peninsula and India, and the more frequently traveled caravan routes of the Near East and North Africa--all conduits for people, goods, coins, artwork, and ideas.
Osterhammel and Petersson argue that the period from 1750 to 1880--an era characterized by the development of free trade and the long-distance impact of the industrial revolution--represented an important phase in the globalization phenomenon. Moreover, they demonstrate how globalization in the mid-twentieth century opened up the prospect of global destruction though nuclear war and ecological catastrophe. In the end, the authors write, today's globalization is part of a long-running transformation and has not ushered in a "global age" radically different from anything that came before.
This book will appeal to historians, economists, and anyone in the social sciences who is interested in the historical emergence of globalization.

"Full of original insights, this is the best introduction to global history on the market today. In little more than 100 pages, it aptly introduces readers to the big themes and questions that arise from global perspectives on the past. If you want to find out what the history of globalization is all about, and how globalization changes our view of the human past, read this book."--Sven Beckert, Harvard University

"This brief book provides an easy-to-read, well-organized addition to the globalization debate that offers a cogent analysis of the macroprocess by elucidating the long and uneven global developments that have brought us to the current era."--Colin Rowan, Journal of World History

"In this crisp account, two historians examine the long roots of globalization. . . . Scholars of world history will gain a great deal from this lucid, jargon-free analysis of globalization that is in many ways a most welcomed update of William H. McNeill's The Global Condition."--The Historian

Jürgen Osterhammel

Jürgen Osterhammel (born 1952 in Wipperfürth, North Rhine-Westphalia) is a German historian.

Osterhammel started his academic career as a research fee student at the London School of Economics in 1976/77 and studied and worked there under Professor Ian Nish. In 1980 he obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Kassel (Germany) in Modern History. Two years later he started as a fellow at the German Historical Institute in London. Between 1986 and 1990 he was the Senior Lecturer in Political Science at the University of Freiburg (Germany). He then worked for seven years as the Professor of Modern History at the German Fern Universität Hagen, a distance-learning institution. He has also worked as a Professor of Modern History at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva before taking up the same position in the University of Konstanz (Germany) in 1999. In 2001-2002 he was a fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences. In 2014 he was elected a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy.

In 2010 Jürgen Osterhammel received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize.

Winner of the 2012 Gerda Henkel Prize, of the Gerda Henkel Foundation

Niels P. Petersson

Niels P. Petersson is Professor of History at Sheffield Hallam University. He has published on globalization, economic history, and European imperialism.