Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | W | WIDER Angle

The evolution of the world economy 1000-2000 AD.

Article Excerpt
We are all familiar with the idea that today we live in an age of 'globalization', in which all the countries of the world are linked tightly together by trade in goods and services, migration and capital movements. When, however, did this age of globalization begin? Is it only as recent as the Internet and the new information technology? Does it go back to the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth century, or even further to the European 'voyages of discovery' of the late fifteenth century? In Power and Plenty: Trade, War and the World Economy in the Second Millennium (Princeton University Press, 2007), we find it necessary to go back all the way to the year 1000 in order to provide a satisfactory answer. In the 624 pages of this book, we give the first unified account of the history of world trade over the last thousand years, in order to explain the complex set of forces that have shaped the emergence of the modern world economy.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

In 1000 the Americas, Australia and Oceania were isolated from the 'Old World' of Europe, Asia and Africa. We therefore begin our analysis with a division of the interactive world economy of the time into seven 'world-regions', defined by a mix of cultural unity and geographic contiguity. These regions are Western Europe, Eastern Europe, the Islamic World of the Middle East and Southwest Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia. Religion plays an important role in defining these regions: Islam in the Middle East, Roman Catholicism in Western Europe, Greek Orthodox Christianity in Eastern Europe, Hinduism in South Asia, Buddhism in Southeast Asia and Confucianism in East Asia, with Central Asia as a zone of religious transition. Though restricted by high transport costs to commodities with a high ratio of value to weight, such as spices and silk, all these regions, as well as sub-Saharan Africa, were linked together by trade, both overland...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!