Create a TL in which globalization (in its modern form) happened as early as possible.
AHC: Earliest Possible Globalization
- Thread starter Barbarossa Rotbart
- Start date
NothingNow
Banned
Not going to happen unless you seriously up the level of technology and trade development massively. Incidentally, pretty much the entire planet's been part of one interlocking trade network or another since the year 1565 (the start of the regular Galleon trade between Luzon and Acapulco,) with the final outliers being introduced to the meta-network by the start of the 19th century.
I always think of the Seven Year War being the first Global War and the British Empire was the first global power, but globalisation needs clear and quick communication as well as goods being traded around the world, so the invetion of the telegraph and trains are a large part of the process.
To me in OTL globalisation has occured by 1870 with the rail network building up and the trans-adlantic cables being laid.
To me in OTL globalisation has occured by 1870 with the rail network building up and the trans-adlantic cables being laid.
Globalization is trade on a global level. And doing it directly without intermediaries.
ComradeHuxley
Donor
I am not sure what exactly you mean by earlier globalization, but an earlier development of container shipping might accelerate it at least. Here is a potential POD for such a development:
From Conway’s ‘The Shipping Revolution’: The Modern Merchant Ship
Building the Steam Navy, Dockyards, Technology and the Creation of the Victorian battle Fleet 1830 – 1906 by David Evans.
Page 170
Another far sighted plan, this time for containerised transport of coal to the yards, was submitted in December 1846 by the solicitors to the Bristol & Poole harbour railway, who having a floating dock at their Bristol terminus:
…by which means their iron Barges containing the Boxes with Welch Steam Coals...will be placed on the Line and conveyed without shifting, or break of gauge direct to Her Majesty’s Stores either at Gosport or Portsmouth or by means of a Pier alongside of which a Steam Ship may lie and the Coals be placed at once on board – affording thereby a continuous supply of Best Steam Coals in first-rate conditions…
They had submitted a scheme to supply 21,000 tons annually to Mr Russell, contractor for supply of coals at Southampton for the Great Western Steam Navigation Company, the P & O Steam navigation Company, and the Royal West India mail Company, and to the Engineer in chief of the last. And they had agreed to support the plan. There would be a small increase in price, but this would be compensated for by the excellent condition of the coal. This offer was not taken up.
From Conway’s ‘The Shipping Revolution’: The Modern Merchant Ship
Building the Steam Navy, Dockyards, Technology and the Creation of the Victorian battle Fleet 1830 – 1906 by David Evans.
Page 170
Another far sighted plan, this time for containerised transport of coal to the yards, was submitted in December 1846 by the solicitors to the Bristol & Poole harbour railway, who having a floating dock at their Bristol terminus:
…by which means their iron Barges containing the Boxes with Welch Steam Coals...will be placed on the Line and conveyed without shifting, or break of gauge direct to Her Majesty’s Stores either at Gosport or Portsmouth or by means of a Pier alongside of which a Steam Ship may lie and the Coals be placed at once on board – affording thereby a continuous supply of Best Steam Coals in first-rate conditions…
They had submitted a scheme to supply 21,000 tons annually to Mr Russell, contractor for supply of coals at Southampton for the Great Western Steam Navigation Company, the P & O Steam navigation Company, and the Royal West India mail Company, and to the Engineer in chief of the last. And they had agreed to support the plan. There would be a small increase in price, but this would be compensated for by the excellent condition of the coal. This offer was not taken up.
IIRC telegraphy and containerised systems on railways were both in use by the 1830s. Screw propellers and iron ships are ~1840. Those would seem to be the main prerequisites for a globalized system of distribution (the trade system already exists in the form of European overseas interests).
All it takes is for some bright spark (maybe in a telegraph office) to be looking at a ship model sat on top of his index card cabinet...
We know how the Victorians loved their standards. So is a MacLean/Tantlinger containerized system a century early viable? The technology was easily within Victorian capabilities, and I'm sure the Brunels and Steph(v)ensons would have had fun designing infrastructure.
Something modelled after the Shropshire Canal tub boat would be small enough to fit on a British railway carriage, stack on a ship and/or transport by canal. 6ft x 6ft by 24ft makes for easy stacking (although my perverse British side wants something 22ft long).
Not sure about the proverbial 'last mile' to the door in town though. The 'edge of town' rail- and slaughteryards might make for distribution centres.
Postwar edge-of-town supermarkets a century early?
NothingNow
Banned
Not sure about the proverbial 'last mile' to the door in town though. The 'edge of town' rail- and slaughteryards might make for distribution centres.
Postwar edge-of-town supermarkets a century early?
I'd say it'd be more edge of town distribution combined with carts carrying crates/pallets the final mile or so from the rail yard or dock.
Most loading and unloading was done by muscle power, you would NEED cranes, and quite possibly powered cranes to deal with such containers.
Assuming 2mx2mx6m container the density of water, that's 24 tonnes. Your containers are about a third smaller, so 18 tonnes. OTOH, containers would often be filled with metal objects and the weight could easily be double that.
your container filled with solid iron would be 100 tonnes +/-
All of you forget one thing. Modern globalization is not container shipping but world wide trading without too many intermediaries. Instead of buying Chinese silk through several intermediaries you have your contor (or a trading colony) in China where you buy the silk directly and ship it home.
I believe that global hegemony, if not out right unity, could have been archived by the British Empire without the existence of the United States to rise as an economic rival.
Maybe...1950?
Maybe...1950?
Delvestius
Banned
Not as long as France was out there, or even Germany... That has alternate World War I written all over it.
wolf_brother
Banned
Globalization existed as early as the 1600s, so you need to be more specific about what you define as "modern" globalization.
No, modern globalization exists since the 17th century, but globalization itself is much older. Silk road, spice trade etc. are all forms of global trade and thus older forms of globalization.
Yes, that is possible because Roman coins had been found in Sri Lanka. And we also know that Ptolemäus called the island Taprobane.
Barbarossa'a right, if you're trying to match "globalization" with what it is right now, vs. a comparable peak at 1914 for ocean trade and the British empire covering 25% of the globe or just long-distance trade networks. It's too easy to assume if well-documented recent Europeans weren't doing it, it didn't exist or matter.
Roman Empire has continual trade up into the Baltic Sea, England, North Africa, East Africa, Western India, and along the Silk Road to the Chinese coast (hence a Chinese embassy in ancient Rome), which at 3 continents and all of the major oceans seems pretty Global to me. We'll leave out remnants of Roman trade in the Americas like a whole ship at Rio De Jeneiro, amphorae, coins, armor, swords, etc..
The Phoenicians and Minoans are also reaching much vaster distances from Baltic amber and English copper and tin to Africa (i.e. Carthage but around much of it's coasts) to Western India. They also show up with a lot of Michigan copper and leave all sorts of physical traces in the Americas as well...and somebody had to be bringing the Egyptians Bolivian cocaine and N. American nicotine/tobacco for it to show up in hundreds of mummies over hundreds of years in ancient Egypt.
If globalization doesn't have to involve an ocean, which given the size of Eurasia and Africa it seems like it shouldn't, you've got domestic livestock, crops and fruit trees, all sorts of fabricated goods from flint arrowheads to Damascus blades, ideas, etc. traveling all over it in more frequent contact than we like to admit going back many thousands of years. Given land travel over vast distances was a lot harder than ocean travel, it should get more credit as the early globalization...we just don't have Tom Friedman's accounts about it to make it obvious (although Jared Diamond does a good job in "Guns, Germs, & Steel" and Jack Wetherford in his books on the Mongols' giant free trade zone or the Native Americans' continents-spanning trade networks.
Big, ocean-going ships that can move light, small high value cargos like manufactured goods or even bulk commodities like copper, timber, olive oil, grain, etc. go back many thousands of years so by some of these definitions you're referring more to global communications that are fast, so transatlantic telegraph lines and long-range radio if not world fiber optic networks and satellite communications and tracking.
Roman Empire has continual trade up into the Baltic Sea, England, North Africa, East Africa, Western India, and along the Silk Road to the Chinese coast (hence a Chinese embassy in ancient Rome), which at 3 continents and all of the major oceans seems pretty Global to me. We'll leave out remnants of Roman trade in the Americas like a whole ship at Rio De Jeneiro, amphorae, coins, armor, swords, etc..
The Phoenicians and Minoans are also reaching much vaster distances from Baltic amber and English copper and tin to Africa (i.e. Carthage but around much of it's coasts) to Western India. They also show up with a lot of Michigan copper and leave all sorts of physical traces in the Americas as well...and somebody had to be bringing the Egyptians Bolivian cocaine and N. American nicotine/tobacco for it to show up in hundreds of mummies over hundreds of years in ancient Egypt.
If globalization doesn't have to involve an ocean, which given the size of Eurasia and Africa it seems like it shouldn't, you've got domestic livestock, crops and fruit trees, all sorts of fabricated goods from flint arrowheads to Damascus blades, ideas, etc. traveling all over it in more frequent contact than we like to admit going back many thousands of years. Given land travel over vast distances was a lot harder than ocean travel, it should get more credit as the early globalization...we just don't have Tom Friedman's accounts about it to make it obvious (although Jared Diamond does a good job in "Guns, Germs, & Steel" and Jack Wetherford in his books on the Mongols' giant free trade zone or the Native Americans' continents-spanning trade networks.
Big, ocean-going ships that can move light, small high value cargos like manufactured goods or even bulk commodities like copper, timber, olive oil, grain, etc. go back many thousands of years so by some of these definitions you're referring more to global communications that are fast, so transatlantic telegraph lines and long-range radio if not world fiber optic networks and satellite communications and tracking.
To me, it's always been there, part of being human. Archaeological evidence of long distance movement of goods goes back tens of thousands of years, if you google. Trade shows up in plenty of early histories. Vast volumes of silks and teas and gold moved, for example.
I've come to hate the word "globalization," because it likes to pretend big trade's something totally new and discovered by a certain New York Times writer, and not the old hat it is.
And, Rotbart, direct contracts across long distances are also ancient hat, frequently made in big trade centers.
I've come to hate the word "globalization," because it likes to pretend big trade's something totally new and discovered by a certain New York Times writer, and not the old hat it is.
And, Rotbart, direct contracts across long distances are also ancient hat, frequently made in big trade centers.