Abstract (238 words):
What the media celebrated in the 1990s as globalization was an observed reality of strong interconnectedness of the economies and societies of the whole modern world. Apart from this observed reality of tight integration, frequently highlighted by the expression, global village, the other reality of the modern world captured by the term globalization is hierarchy — the integrated economies and societies of the world are unequal in economic and political power. This paper argues that the study of globalization as a historical process must have as its focus the long-run historical processes which gave rise to the twin realities of the modern world, integration and hierarchy, with all the attendant consequences over time. The paper argues further that initially the process was regional (de-centered) and discontinuous, characterized by the creation over time of enlarged socioeconomic systems covering large geographical areas and exhibiting the potential for sustained geographical expansion. For various historical reasons (including long-term ecological change), all but one of these processes failed to produce an integrated global system. Ultimately, they were aborted or incorporated by the more successful system. But even the aborted processes created in their respective regions something subsequently inherited by the incorporating system to constitute the modern global order. The paper presents the Niger Bend of West Africa, 1000-1591 CE, as one of the regional globalization processes that preceded the more successful regional process in the Atlantic world from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century.