Origins of Globalization in the Framework of the Afroeurasian World-System History

Ch. 2. P. 37–70.

Grinin L. E., Korotayev A.

The formation of the Afroeurasian world-system was one of the crucial points of social evolution, starting from which the social evolution rate and effectiveness increased dramatically. In the present chapter we analyze processes and scales of global integration in historical perspective, starting with the Agrarian Revolution. We connect the main phases of historical globalization with the processes of the development of the Afroeurasian world-system. In the framework of the Afroeurasian world-system the integration began a few thousand years BCE. In this world-system the continental and supracontinental links became rather developed long before the Great Geographic Discoveries and thus, they could quite be denoted as global (albeit in a somehow limited sense). As some researchers are still inclined to underestimate the scale of those links in the pre-Industrial era, it appears necessary to provide additional empirical support for our statement. It also turns necessary to apply a special methodology (which necessitated the use of the world-system approach). We analyze some versions of periodization of globalization history. We also propose our own periodization of globalization history using as its basis the growing scale of intersocietal links as an indicator of the level of globalization development.

Keywords: globalization, global communication, World System, Afroeurasian world-system, industrial revolution, Technologies, World-systems, Cycles of political hegemony, Agrarian revolution, social evolution

Publication based on the results of: Near and Middle East in the context of the global phase transition (2017)

In book

Comparing Globalizations Historical and World-Systems Approaches

Springer Publishing Company, 2018.