jun 1, 1700 - Globalization

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The History of Globalization: 17th and 18th Century
As I shall discuss shortly, scholars argue that one of the largest periods of globalization was in the mid-1800s, up until World War I. While it is necessary to discuss that period of growth as it relates to the overall history of globalization, we should also better understand the conditions that existed in the world leading up to the time period. Prior to the industrial revolution in the mid-late 1700s until the early 1800s, a great deal of economic output was rather restricted to a few countries. For example, “In 1750 more than 50 percent of the world’s industrial output was produced in China and India, compared to some 18 percent in Western Europe” (Crafts & Venables, 2003: 325). Furthermore, “During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, world trade had expanded at a steady clip of around 1 percent per year, outpacing the rise in world incomes but not greatly so” (Rodrik, 2011).

However, following the Industrial revolution, the numbers in Europe grew rapidly. In fact, “The following eighty years saw the Industrial Revolution, with western Europe’s industrial output more than doubling and that of the United Kingdom increasing by a factor of 7” (325). In addition, “Starting sometime in the early part of the nineteenth century, world trade began to grow by leaps and bounds, registering an unprecedented rte of almost 4 percent per annum…” (24).

In fact, when looking at production, it rose greatly in Europe from about 1820 onwards, with the fall of China and India at roughly the same time period (Crafts & Venables, 2003).

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