Description
There is a long and rich tradition of critical scholarship within international studies about what globalization is, what its main characteristics are, whether it is an old or modern phenomenon, and how it can be measured and assessed. This paper takes a fresh look at the historical and geographical origins of globalisation, arguing that globalisation is better understood as a scalar project based on the forging of a new international political economy for capitalist development. Drawing on the French tradition in geography, I first argue for the need to distinguish between mondialisation and globalisation as two distinct yet interconnected period of capitalist expansion that are at once in continuity and ruptured. Building on this distinction, I then argue that the 1870-1950 period oversaw the birth, growth, and consolidation of globalisation as first and foremost a process of universal and abstract time and space.
