Globalization (or Globalisation) refers to increasing global connectivity and integration in the economic, social, technological, cultural, political, and ecological spheres.

Definition

Globalization can be defined as the worldwide integration of economic, cultural, political, religious, and social systems.

There are several definitions, many of which mention the increasing connectivity of economies and ways of life across the world. While some scholars and observers of globalization stress convergence of patterns of production and consumption and a resulting homogenization of culture, others stress that globalization has the potential to take many diverse forms.

In economics, globalization is the convergence of prices, products, wages, rates of interest and profits towards developed country norms. Globalization of the economy depends on the role of human migration, international trade, movement of capital, and integration of financial markets. The International Monetary Fund notes the growing economic interdependence of countries worldwide through increasing volume and variety of cross-border transactions, free international capital flows, and more rapid and widespread diffusion of technology. Theodore Levitt is usually credited with globalization's first use in an economic context.

Historical precedents

The term "globalization" was popularized by Theodore Levitt, a professor at Harvard University. Levitt has been erroneously credited with coining the term in 1983, but the word "globalization" can be traced back to 1944. The term has been used by economists since 1981, however its concepts did not permeate popular consciousness until the latter half of the 1990s. Various social scientists have tried to demonstrate continuity between contemporary trends of globalization and earlier periods. The first era of globalization during the 19th century was the rapid growth of international trade between the European imperial powers, the European colonies, and the United States. Because of the first era of globalization, World War I was started. After World War II, globalization was restarted and was driven by major advances in technology, which led to lower trading costs. The term "globalization" has often been linked to the rise of corporate dominance, and is often used synonymously with the term "corporate giant", first coined by Charles Taze Russell in 1897.[not specific enough to verify][improper
synthesis

Globalization is viewed as a centuries long process, tracking the expansion of human population and the growth of civilization, that has accelerated dramatically in the past 50 years. Earlier forms of globalization existed during the Arab Empire and Islamic Golden Age, when knowledge and trade throughout the Old World began integrating due to Muslim scholars and explorers, and during the Mongol Empire, when there was greater integration along the Silk Road. Global integration continued through the expansion of European trade, as in the 16th and 17th centuries, when the Portuguese and Spanish Empires reached to all corners of the world after expanding to the Americas.

Globalization became a business phenomenon in the 17th century when the Dutch East India Company, which is often described as the first multinational corporation, was established. Because of the high risks involved with international trade, the Dutch East India Company became the first company in the world to share risk and enable joint ownership through the issuing of shares: an important driver for globalization.

Liberalization in the 19th century is often called "The First Era of Globalization", a period characterized by rapid growth in international trade and investment, between the European imperial powers, their colonies, and, later, the United States. The "First Era of Globalization" began to break down at the beginning with the first World War, and later collapsed during the gold standard crisis in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Lenin's Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916) provided a seminal critique of this period as being characterised by the exploitation of the third world by those in the first. This theme forms the basis of many recent critiques of globalisation.

Globalization in the era since World War II has been driven by advances in technology which have reduced the costs of trade, and trade negotiation rounds, originally under the auspices of GATT, which led to a series of agreements to remove restrictions on free trade. The Uruguay round (1984 to 1995) led to a treaty to create the World Trade Organization (WTO), to mediate trade disputes and set up a uniform platform of trading. Other bi- and trilateral trade agreements, including sections of Europe's Maastricht Treaty and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) have also been signed in pursuit of the goal of reducing tariffs and barriers to trade grand.

The world increasingly is confronted by problems that cannot be solved by individual nation-states acting alone. Examples include cross-boundary air and water pollution, over-fishing of the oceans and other degradations of the natural environment, regulation of outer-space, global warming, international terrorist networks, global trade and finance, and so on. Solutions to these problems necessitate new forms of cooperation and the creation of new global institutions. Since the end of WWII, following the advent of the UN and the Bretton Woods institutions, there has been an explosion in the reach and power of multinational corporations and the rapid growth of global civil society.