Origins of globalization

[Diane Monaco <dmonaco@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

A glance at the February issue of
"Historically Speaking":
Tracing the origins of globalization

James Muldoon, an emeritus professor of history at Rutgers 
University at Camden and a research scholar at Brown 
University's John Carter Brown Library, traces the seemingly 
inexorable process of globalization not to Nike, McDonald's, or 
Coca-Cola, but to a "vision of the right order of the world"
that developed in medieval Europe. He writes that, contrary to 
popular thought, globalization is a culmination of "a process 
that has been going on not from 1492 but from the 11th
century."

It was a process born, Mr. Muldoon continues, when the world 
view of medieval European thinkers -- who combined Christian 
ideals and Aristotelian notions of civilization -- bound 
religion, society, and law into a cohesive vision. These 
"medieval canonists," Mr. Muldoon concludes, "were
probably the 
first to conceive humankind in truly global terms." And the rest
is history: expansion overseas, "discovery" of "new"
lands, 
curiosity about the rest of the world, and so forth.

But the religious underpinnings of these desires are too often 
overlooked, according to Mr. Muldoon: "The formal justifications
for occupying newly discovered lands ... always explained 
contact and conquest in terms of the Church's universal 
mission." And "what we now call globalization is really a
continuation of a process that has been proceeding for a 
millennium as European Christian society has expanded far beyond 
its original home."

An excerpt of the article is available on the magazine's Web 
site, at
http://www.bu.edu/historic/hs/feb02.html
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