Globalization Key Issue: Why are different places similar?

GLOBALIZATION  Definition: force or process that involves the entire world and results in making something worldwide in scope.  The scale of the world is SHRINKING!!  People are able to share ideas, objects, and innovations faster than ever!!  Example: Internet, TV, Cell phones, Planes  DID YOU KNOW DID YOU KNOW DID YOU KNOW

The Pre-modern World  1 st agricultural revolution  Involved a transition from hunter-gather groups to agricultural-based minisystems  Began in Neolithic Period  Between B.C.E.  Key developments:  slash- and-burn agriculture  Needed certain geo settings  Aka: Hearth Areas  Main Hearth Regions  Middle East  Fertile crescent  Tigris and Euphrates River  South Asia  Ganges Plain  Brahmaputra, Indus, and Irrawaddy rivers  China  Huang He River/ Valley  Americas  Mesoamerica  Arizona/ New Mexico  Andes  Implications  Allowed high pop densities  Change in social organization  Specialization  Barter and trade emerged

Early Empires  World-empire:  Group of mini-systems that have been absorbed into a common political system  Wealth flows from producer class to elite through taxes or tributes  Best know, longest lasting:  Egypt  Greece  China  Byzantium  Rome

Early Empires  Brought two new elements to the evolution of the world’s geographies  Colonization Colonization  Physical settlement in a new territory of people from a colonizing state  Law of diminishing returns  Clearest example: Rome  Also led to developments in Geography  Urbanization  Towns and cities became essential as centers of administration for early world- empires  Gave rise to monumental capitals  Most successful world- empires  Greece  Rome  Size and sophistication

Geography of the Pre-Modern World  1400 C.E.  Dominant Centers  China  Northern India  Ottoman Empire  All linked by Silk Road  Capitalism  Major regions of world connected by trade  Emerging centers of Capitalism  Port cities  Traders began to to organize the production of agricultural specialties, textiles, and craft products in their respective hinterlands  Hinterland: sphere of economic influence

Geography of the Pre-Modern World  Geographic Knowledge  Between C.E.  Geo knowledge expands thanks to Chinese and Islamic scholars  Chinese maps were most accurate at time  Thanks to Chinese sailors  Centers of scholarship  Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo, and Granada  Surviving Roman and Greek works translated into Arabic  Used Chinese cartography and geographical writings  Hajj created demand for travel guidebooks

An Interdependent World Geography  Exploration began to be seen as an important way of opening up opportunities for trade and economic expansion  World-system emerged  Definition: an inter-dependent system of countries linked by political and economic competition  Term coined by Immanuel Wallerstein  Core and Periphery  Western Europe became the core region of the world- system that had penetrated and incorporated significant portions of the rest of the world  Not external areas  Periphery  Countries that were dependent on Europe  Territories occupied and labor system exploited

Core and Periphery in the New World System  Thanks to industrial revolution, capitalism truly became a global system that reached almost every part of the world  Human geographies recast were recast with a more interdependent dynamic  New transportation technologies led to external colonization and imperialism

Wallerstein’s World-Systems  The three tiers  Core  Dominate trade, control most advanced technologies, and have high levels of productivity within diversified economies  Semi- Periphery  Exploit periphery but are still exploited by Core  Periphery  Dependent trading relationships  Undeveloped or narrowly specialized economies

Organizing the Periphery  Growth and internal development of core regions would not have taken place without goods and markets provided by periphery  Early 1900s led to colonization  Logic behind colonization was economic  International Division of Labor  Definition: involves the specialization of different people, regions and countries in certain kinds of economic activities  Led to specializations based on core countries needs  Example:  Cotton in India  Copper in Chile  Sugar in Caribbean

Imperialism  Late 19 th century Britain was dominant power  Other notable countries scrambling for global influence as well  Japan, Germany, U.S., France, Netherlands  Countries “preemptively” expanded and denying other countries colonies  Africa most affected  Carved up in 34 years  Also pacific islands  Impact  Immediate and profound  Almost rendered completely dependent on European and North American capital, shipping, news and communications  Also dependent on cultural products  i.e. religion, education  Led to Ethnocentrism and Environmental Determinism

 Ethnocentrism  Attitude that one’s race and culture are superior to others  Environmental Determinism  A doctrine holding that human activities are shaped and constrained by the environment  19 th / 20 th century assumption that the physical attributes of geographical settings are the root not only of people’s physical differences but also in people’s economic vitality, cultural activities, and social structures

The Third World  Imperial World disintegrated after WWII  U.S. emerged as new hegemonic power  “1 st world”  Soviet Union and China seen as “2 nd world” withdrawn from Capitalism  1950s  Many old European colonies sought independence  Violent often  By 1960s process more smooth  New creation of “Third World”  Politically independent states  Didn’t always align with 1 st or 2 nd world countries  Dependent, economically, on core

Neocolonialism  New independent states struggled after 1960s to be free of dependence  Old system broke down, new complex system emerged  Neocolonialism  Definition:  economic and political strategies by which powerful states in core economies indirectly maintain or extend their influence over other areas and people  No more direct rule  Commercial imperialism  Giant corporations grew within core countries, became so big = transnational