History of Globalization

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

This course takes a multidisciplinary and long-term approach to studying the history and nature of globalization. It shows that some long-term forces of globalization have been at play for centuries or millennia, and it questions how and why new, stronger forces of globalization were unleashed with the industrial revolution and the rise of modern finance. By adopting a very broad definition of economics, this course treats globalization largely as an economic phenomenon, without neglecting its social and cultural implications. No previous training in economics is required. Other disciplines that help shape this courses’ approach and content are History, International Relations, Finance, Geopolitics, and Current Events. This is a seminar course, which means that instruction is mainly discussion-based. The course also consists of many historical workshops – class periods in which students have the opportunity to engage with historical material hands-on, to discover and debate the meaning of the traces of the past. While the course is a broad overview in the style of a world history, it does not attempt to tell history as a single story, and it certainly does not attempt history only from a Western perspective.