Globalization

By emilianobustamante
  • 50 BCE

    Silk Roads

    For the first time in history, luxury products from China started to appear on the other edge of the Eurasian continent – in Rome. They got there after being hauled for thousands of miles along the Silk Road. Trade had stopped being a local or regional affair and started to become global.
  • 600

    Spice Routes

    The next chapter in trade happened thanks to Islamic merchants. As the new religion spread in all directions from its Arabian heartland in the 7th century, so did trade.
  • 1492

    Age of Discovery

    European explorers connected East and West – and accidentally discovered the Americas. The Portuguese, Spanish and later the Dutch and the English integrated new lands in their economies.

  • First Wave of Globalization

    Great Britain had started to dominate the world both geographically, through the establishment of the British Empire, and technologically, with innovations like the steam engine, the industrial weaving machine and more.The “British” Industrial Revolution made for a fantastic twin engine of global trade.

  • World War I

    After the WWI, the financial markets, which were still connected in a global web, caused a further breakdown of the global economy and its links.

  • World War II

    Another world war followed in 1939-1945. By the end of World War II, trade as a percentage of world GDP had fallen to 5% – a level not seen in more than a hundred years. The end of the World War II marked a new beginning for the global economy

  • Second Wave of Globalization

    In the early decades after World War II, institutions like the European Union, and other free trade vehicles championed by the US were responsible for much of the increase in international trade.

  • Third Wave of Globalization

    When the wall dividing East and West fell in Germany, and the Soviet Union collapsed, globalization became an all-conquering force.

  • World Trade Organization is founded

    The newly created World Trade Organization (WTO) encouraged nations all over the world to enter into free-trade agreements, and most of them did, including many newly independent ones.

  • Globalization 4.0

    In a world increasingly dominated by two global powers, the US and China, the new frontier of globalization is the cyber world. The digital economy, in its infancy during the third wave of globalization, is now becoming a force to reckon with through e-commerce, digital services, 3D printing. It is further enabled by artificial intelligence, but threatened by cross-border hacking and cyberattacks.