Empires and Globalization

The global turn towards the market of the 1980s and 1990s led some to believe that globalization was untethering itself from its political moorings. More recently, however, the combined impact of the China shock, Covid, and war have revealed even to economists what historians and political scientists have always understood, namely that globalization is a fundamentally political phenomenon. It is not just a question of politicians deciding to keep their hands off the market, as if the state sphere and private transactions were substitutes, with more of one implying less of the other. Rather, domestic and international political forces provide the institutional context within which international trade and finance, technology transfers, and labour flows take place (or not). It thus seems appropriate to revisit one of the most obvious examples of how geopolitics has shaped globalization, namely imperialism. What have been the connections between imperialism and international economic integration over time? On some definitions , modern globalization emerged in the 19th century, which was also the classic period of European colonialism (O'Rourke and Williamson 2002). But on other definitions globalization is a much older phenomenon, while empires have existed for millennia (Flynn and Giráldez, 2004; Findlay and O'Rourke, 2007). I therefore begin this survey with an overview of the links between imperialism and globalization in the ancient, medieval, and early modern worlds. I then consider the links between modern colonialism, flows of labour and capital, and trade, before briefly considering the legacy of imperialism.