Waves of globalization—of increased interaction between formerly
separate societies and economies—have occurred since the dawn of
civilization. These waves have typically been sponsored by a
dominant power, and they have benefited from the certainty of law
and the reliability of property rights associated with that
power. Until the European discoveries of the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries, the power may have been dominant only in a
region of the world, as the Roman empire was in the
Mediterranean, the Han empire in China, and Ashoka’s empire in
India. The regional empires were necessary precursors of the full
globalization of the last five hundred years.

It is not going too far to say that modern civilization would be
unimaginable without globalization. Globalization is about the
specialization of certain localities, towns, cities, and
eventually nations and continents on those types of production
where they have a comparative advantage; it leads to the growth
of trade patterns and money flows based on this specialization
and to vast increases in economic efficiency. The advance towards
greater prosperity is also towards more complex, interesting, and
cultured ways of life.

Globalization has come in waves; it has not been delivered in one
long, upward curve. In some periods the process went into reverse.
These were periods when contacts between different societies
became less frequent and more problematic, and often were so
difficult as to lead to violence or war. They were characterized
by contractions in the flows of trade and money between
societies, and