The Ages of Globalization: Geography, Technology, and Institutions

Two voyages of the 1490s—those of Christopher Columbus from the Atlantic coast of Spain to the Caribbean in 1492 and of Vasco de Gama from Lisbon to Calicut, India, in 1498 and back in 1499—decisively changed the direction of world history. Humanity’s understanding of the world and our place in it, the organization of the global economy, the center

The U.S. geopolitical leadership has shown two faces to the world. One was the U.S. interest in building law-based multilateral institutions, including the global institutions of the UN system and regional institutions such as the European Community (and later European Union), of which the United States was a champion from the start. The other was

Self-sustaining industrialization took off just once in human history, in Britain in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. All other industrialization since then are descendants of the technologies, corporate laws, and financial mechanisms of Britain’s breakthrough. Before Britain’s industrial revolution, other places had developed industr

Industrialization and the accompanying advances in farm mechanization and agronomic know-how vastly expanded the food production per farmer in the industrial economies. Where it was once necessary for almost all households to be engaged in farming in order to grow enough food for the population, it became possible for a smaller and declining share

If we think regionally rather than nationally, we can say that there are now three centers of endogenous growth in the world economy: the United States; the European Union; and northeast Asia, including three R&D powerhouses: China, Japan, and South Korea. For the first time since the industrial revolution, innovation is not centered in the Nor

The monsoon rains are the lifeblood of Asia’s highly productive rice-growing agriculture, which in turn feeds much of humanity. It is because of the temperate-zone monsoons of Asia that Southern, Southeastern, and Eastern Asia are home to 55 percent of the world’s population in 2020.

What is notable about geopolitics is how rapid global change can be. Empires rise and fall with stunning speed. In 1914, Britain still ruled the world. By 1960, Britain’s empire had essentially vanished and the Soviet Union seemed to challenge the United States for hegemonic leadership. By December 1991, the Soviet Union too had vanished from the m

One of the key reasons we should expect China’s continued vitality and rapid economic growth is that China has moved from being an importer of technologies from the United States and Europe to becoming a major technology innovator and exporter in its own right. An example of China’s new technological prowess is in high-speed wireless technology, no

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Even today, the Americas remain sparsely populated relative to Europe and Asia. The population densities of the continents (population per km2) as of 2018 are estimated as follows: Asia, 95; Europe, 73; Africa, 34; North America, 22; South America, 22; Australia, 3.