Abstract

In the following essay, I will identify the global(izing) processes of integration and/or fragmentation and their relation to global history based on three distinct articles written by Jürgen Osterhammel and Niels P. Petersson (‘Globalization: A Short History’), Sebastian Conrad and Dominic Sachsenmaier (‘Introduction’ in ‘Competing Visions of World Order: Global Moments and Movements, 1880s-1930s’) and Emily S. Rosenberg(‘Transnational Currents in a Shrinking World’ in ‘A World Connecting, 1870-1945’). In the first part of the paper, I would put the emphasis on examining the role of transnational currents vis-à-vis integration and/or fragmentation, while in the second part I would scrutinize the unifying and diversifying factors of globalization between the late 19th and early 20th century in both scientific-technological and socio-cultural, legal terms. Theoretically, this classification can bolster my argument; however in reality, I believe it is impossible to completely detach them from one another due to their interconnectedness. I would conclude the essay with highlighting the differences between global and world history and explain why I regard the above-mentioned processes as part of the former category.  

1. Introduction

Imagine a map of the world. Globalization enmeshes not only the political, economic and cultural aspects of our lives, but also technology and information. However, we could ask the following questions; what is it we are dealing with, what is globalization about? The answers may obviously vary, although I would like to point out one of the definitions given by Anthony McGrew, in which he reasons that globalization is comprised of a ‘multiplicity of linkages and interconnections that transcend the nation states which make up the modern world system. It defines a process through which events, decisions and activities in one part of the world can come to have a significant consequence for individuals and communities in quite distant parts of the globe.’ (Kofman, Youngs, 1996, p. 116)

According to Osterhammel and Petersson, the term ‘globalization’ summarizes ‘a wide spectrum of experiences shared by many people’ (Osterhammel, Petersson, 2005, p. 2) as a result of a constant spread of values and principles from across world. The technological innovations paved the way for talking about ‘time-space compression’ in light of growing interconnectedness and interdependence among various actors. 

However, due to its totality and static feature, it is hard to grasp the essence of the concept; therefore I would like to use a dynamic definition as a point of departure in the essay. In the following, I would define globalization as ‘the development, concentration, and increasing importance of worldwide integration’ (Ibid. p. 26), focusing on the transfers, movements, creation and erosion of links and network between diverse places on the globe.

In this essay, I am willing to identify the global(izing) processes of integration and/or fragmentation and their relation to global history. In the first part of the paper, I put the emphasis on examining the role of transnational currents vis-à-vis integration and/or fragmentation, while in the second part I would like to scrutinize the unifying as well as the diversifying factors of globalization between the late 19th and early 20th century in both scientific-technological and socio-cultural, legal terms. Theoretically, this classification can bolster my argument; however in reality, I believe it is impossible to completely detach them from one another due to their interconnectedness. I conclude with highlighting the differences between global and world history and explain why I regard the above-mentioned processes as part of the former category.  

2. Transnational currents vis-à-vis global(izing) processes

The metaphor of transnational currents may prove to be a helpful tool to analyze the complex and asymmetric system of power relations, as it distances itself from the core-periphery model and the notion of Eurocentrism, focusing on the importance of processes that are truly global in nature. I believe that transnational networks can depict the characteristics of integration as well as fragmentation, since currents operating in disparate circuits has the ability to make far-reaching connections and bring elements together, but they can also reflect diversification and disunity. Emily S. Rosenberg points out that ‘networks among states and interconnections among peoples often transcend boundaries and draw different nationalities and cultures together.’ (Rosenberg, 2012, p. 818)

I would also argue that in order to reveal the global(izing) processes of integration and/or fragmentation, we have to transcend the national borders to be able to illuminate the progression of culture, disease, gender, race, and science in the global context. Furthermore, it is also crucial to note that transnational currents not only expanded in competition with nationalism, but also as a complement of it, since many networks were constituted as an outcome of the Western desire to make concepts and ideas universal across the entire world.

Additionally, the use of currents may be useful in analytical terms as it depicts how interwoven local and global spaces are, drawing our attention to the importance of actors interacting with one another. On top of that, it should not be forgotten that there are two sides to every coin. A cultural or religious clash can be equally linked to mutual borrowings, experience and knowledge and not only to imperialism and oppression.

Before delving into the matter of unification and diversification from the late 19th to the early 20th century, a term has to be highlighted, that is increasingly present in our globalizing world. It is called ‘differentiated commonalities’ and it is defined as common attributes ‘that manifest themselves differently depending on the unpredictable frictions arising from geographical, temporal, and sociocultural locations.’ (Ibid. p. 820) Accordingly, I would reason that the global(izing) forces of integration and/or fragmentation are not as clear-cut and black-and-white as we might have imagined. Instead of being in complete opposition with each other, they are rather complementary processes, producing diversity as well as uniformity in their constant interaction.

3. Processes of integration and fragmentation

3. 1. Scientific and Technological Sphere

According to Conrad and Sachsenmaier, we could focus on the ‘global moments’ of history in order to identify processes of global nature between the late 19th and early 20th century. They define those as ‘characteristics for the high time of globalization since the late nineteenth century allowing oppositional movements to connect with forces and political actors across a variety of social and cultural conditions.’ (Conrad, Sachsenmaier, 2007, p. 13)

As a result of significant progress made in transportation, time and space required coordination in order to meet logistical and safety regulations. The International Meridian Conference of 1884 aimed to select the common zero of longitude that could be applied for the measurement of time throughout the world. On one hand, the conference was greatly representative with the inclusion of twenty-five countries, but on the other hand it was not truly global in nature, since India and China carried on with the usage of sundials and their own local time.

Furthermore, I would argue that communication and information technologies started to be in the center from the latter half of the 19th century. The most fundamental innovations from this period were the telegraph and the telephone, both of them strengthening the belief that our world was becoming more and more interconnected with the gradual reduction of time and space. New institutions were founded internationally, such as the International Telegraph Union and the Universal Postal Union, which facilitated the creation of equally-accepted principles and practices around the globe.

Science also proved to be a sector containing global(izing) processes, since the discoveries and breakthroughs in this field often ‘boosted…national prestige, facilitated a colonial strategy, and fostered transnational research networks.’ (Rosenberg, 2012, p. 922) Nationalism obviously spawned fragmentation, while inter- and transnationalism pushed their way into the direction of integration. Historians from the West committed themselves to the belief that scientific knowledge had started to evolve in their modern societies and then slowly infiltrated into less developed nations. Post-colonialists, on the contrary, claimed that interactions between local and global play an important role, with one of the analyzed units being more ‘backward’ than the other, as it opens the door to comparison as well as experimentation. 

The administration on the colonies from the late 19th century necessitated a system that surveyed, gathered and evaluated data on both land and people. On the one hand, the collective desire to improve maps with the incorporation of the most recent scientific knowledge was a sign of homogenization. Furthermore, the sense of actually getting to know certain things ‘provided a strong pillar… of the conviction that the world, through science, might converge into a unified, if hierarchically ordered, whole.’ (Ibid. p. 926) However, the vast differences between people were magnified in terms of race, complexion and gender.

Globalization has always been related to the shrinkage of our world, but the discipline that actually drew the globe completely together in geographical terms was engineering. Through the construction of bridges, canals and roads, civil workers contributed to the formation of transnational networks, inducing global(izing) processes of integration and fragmentation. The former is attached to the increasing interconnectedness and interdependence among the actors, while the latter is tied to national and racial differentiation.

During the heyday of professional associations in natural sciences, Japanese and Chinese could also participate in transnational networks, mostly in the fields of engineering and seismology. Indian studies centered on chemistry and physics skyrocketed as well after the initiation for the establishment of Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science. In the early 20th century, natural science went through a significant transformation as ‘international unions were formed for astronomy, biology, chemistry, geophysics, and physics in 1919 and for geography, radio science, mechanics, soil sciences, and microbiology in the 1920s.’ (Ibid. p. 932) With the example of China, Japan and India, I intended to show that the surge in the scientific field could not only be seen in the West, but also in separate corners of the world. They were often dependent on the empire and unequal in effect, but their contribution to natural science cannot be disputed.

In line with the developments of the above-mentioned field, social studies started to proliferate in the late 19th and early 20th century. Intellectuals of ‘political economy, sociology, and education addressed questions of public sanitation, vice, labor codes, currency, poverty, housing, disability, and old age.’ (Ibid. p. 936) Besides the dominant role of welfare systems in the United States, other networks of social science had been created in China, Japan and the Ottoman Empire for example. Traveling, exchange programs, conferences, and world’s fairs gathered the people from diverse places, organizing a sense of international community. The downside of the process could be the increasing number of dissenters emphasizing the excessive self-confidence and the antidemocratic inclination of technocratic knowledge.

When it comes to racial science, it is crucial to state that race has always been attached to fragmentation, rather than integration. Due to that, attempts to homogenize the population had been numerous between the mid-nineteenths and the mid-twentieth century. Ranging from the ‘race-suicide theories’ that defined ‘better races’ through the understanding of mixture within races as a degenerative feature and the belief that the replacement of culture would contribute to commonly-accepted morality and discipline to the ‘whitening of the people’ via immigration, efficiency and modernization. After the First World War, eugenics - an idea of scientific breeding with the aim of improving humans – became dominant in light of the tremendous loss of lives. Not long after, eugenics promoted ‘human betterment’ through sterilization and the elimination of those who were ‘unfit’ in societies. However, the Universal Races Congress in 1911 advocated harmony between races, suggesting that culture and not race was to be regarded as a dividing line, which resulted in ‘programs for ‘whitening populations’ as a mark of social improvement losing scientific justification.’ (Ibid. p. 943)

Between the 1870s and the 1900s, when famine ravaged China and India, it seemed essential that those countries would reform their agricultural techniques by calling for Western assistance in that field. Processes of integration and fragmentation can be equally identified with forestry sciences as well, since the introduction of new practices and methods, raising awareness in relation to irresponsible ecological intervention and the growing cooperation between local and colonial experts were definitely signs of unification. Contrarily, diversification manifested itself in the intention of colonial agricultural experts to increase their income at the expense of the locals, who disregarded that ‘interaction with the West could often devastate the complex social and economic networks that supported native production and land tenure systems, agronomists allied with engineers to build circuits of knowledge that promised to boost yields, control floods and erosion, and eliminate pests.’ (Ibid. p. 933)

3. 2. Social, Cultural and Legal Sphere

Education was clearly one of the stepping-stones of integration as it led directly to the formulation of global consciousness throughout the globe due to the proliferation of elites. As a consequence, the acceleration of transfers and movements across the national borders brought about a shift towards integration and the growing fear of newly-established transnational connections.

The occurrences of the late nineteenth century ‘spurred the growth of literacy and of letter writing… generating a revolution in written communication and print media.’ (Ibid. p. 828) I would reason that the changes were mainly of integrating nature, since magazines and books were striving to cater the needs of elites and middle-class; however, fragmentation was present in the form of growing inequalities between those who were literate and those who were not. Besides that, money was also a dividing line, as it largely determined who could have access to products of print media and who could not.

After the establishment of the International Olympic Committee in 1894, Pierre de Coubertin, the father of the modern Olympic Games, advocated the ability of the event to bring people together globally. Furthermore, he reasoned that the games ‘would bolster manliness, transcend national differences, and foster respect for others’ (Ibid. pp. 831-832), emphasizing the internationalist characteristics of the sporting event. Along with soccer, the Olympics were willing to represent a unified international community centered on sports. However; the games often mirrored imperial interests and gender inequality. The most advanced and powerful nations of the time regarded international events similar to their local gatherings and would have therefore used the same rules and practices without making any kind of modifications in them. Besides that, initially the Olympic Games were strictly constrained to the participation of wealthy men with political influence. Hence, people with inadequate financial status and women were excluded from the games, the latter until 1922, the first Women’s World Games.

International Law started to gain ground in the 1860s as lawyers recommended that ‘universal legal principles should gradually be codified and spread.’ (Ibid. p. 834) The desire to create law that could equally be applied throughout the entire world was closely tied to a ‘civilizing mission’ originated in the West due to the proliferation of views of history as an evolutionary process. While law creation and newly-formulated legal disciplines could contribute to making the world more integrated and interconnected, it could also highlight the vast differences between developed and developing nations. International arbitration came to the forefront at the end of the 19th century in Europe with the vision of preventing conflicts, instead of eventually ending them. With the outbreak of the First and the Second World War optimism was severely crushed as nationalism prevailed over internationalism, but the intention of having international institutions with the purpose of coordinating conflicts endured time.

The interplay between global and local in cities seemed to be complementary, rather than of opposing nature, since urban centers concentrated production and wealth by drawing in elites, eventually contributing to the creation of economic interrelationships in the transnational sphere. However, apart from the process of integration, cities were known to stress the differences between people in terms of their financial status and ethnicity.

The acceleration of commerce and trade were thought to have only been coupled with mutual benefits and integration, although the world that has become more intertwined than ever before presented serious challenges, tending towards fragmentation. One of these issues was the sweeps of disease and pandemics at the end of the 19th century. On one hand, organizing global sanitary conferences gathered the leading experts from all over the world, so that they could work together with local scientist developing antidotes. On the other hand, the process accentuated racial ideological differences between the Western powers and the indigenous people on the colonies. In addition, the West feared the spread of pandemics as it could have been damaging for their superior role justified by racial and imperial dominance. In general ‘disease provided a central cultural trope of this interconnected age [as it] became part of a moral discourse that marked tropical bodies as backward and hazardous and justified exogenous interventions, including colonialism.’ (Ibid. p. 954)    

I began the identification of global(izing) processes with focusing on ‘global moments’ so it only fits to end it with the emphasis on ‘global movements’. The phenomenon is clearly attached to the free movement of both people and ideologies across the globe, transcending the national boundaries. However, we cannot overlook the issues of mass migration that could undermine political and legal order and the unrestricted spread of extreme rightest, fascist and communist movements. ‘In a linked world, alliances, affiliations, ethnic and class hatreds, and research on modern war-making techniques quickly fed the global conflagration. The internationalism of the late nineteenth century turned defensive and fearful in the mid-twentieth century’s increasingly interconnected, yet increasingly militarized, world.’ (Ibid. p. 846)

4. The comparison of global and world history

In his book titled Thinking History Globally (2015), Diego Olstein reflects on the complexity of defining world and global history by striving to delineate the above-mentioned concepts, stating they are clearly distinguishable from each other; however their meanings might sometimes overlap. He argues that global history ‘adopts the interconnected world created by the process of globalization as its larger unit of analysis, providing the ultimate context for the analysis of any historical entity, phenomenon, or process.’ (Olstein, 2015, p. 24) On the contrary, world history – according to his opinion – ‘adopts the world as its ultimate unit of analysis and looks for phenomena that had an impact on humanity as a whole or processes that brought different societies into contact, even before the entire globe became interconnected through the process of globalization.’ (Ibid. p. 27) World history could therefore encompass issues related to commerce, environment, cultural and religious encounters, and migration. Based on the definition of Olstein, it is obvious that globalization is the main dividing line when it comes to the categorization of global(izing) processes into global or world history. While the former is occupied with studying the connections and interconnectivity in general among various entities, the latter has the focus on courses and methods that are not necessarily the consequences of globalization.

In A History of World Societies (2012), John P. McKay reasons that while global history puts the emphasis on the importance of connections, world history is primarily engaged with the history of civilizations with special attention paid to unique features and separate identities. William H. McNeill’s definition of the concepts in The Global History Reader (2005) is somewhat similar, since he argues that global history is practically the history of globalization and world history is about ‘trans-civilizational encounters and interactions among peoples of diverse cultures.’ (Mazlish, Iriye, 2005, p. 17)

According to the differentiation made by Osterhammel and Petersson, world history highlights the crucial role of comparison and internal dynamics between civilizations, while global history accentuates the existing ties and interrelationship. Hence, global history can be viewed as a ‘type of ‘diagonal’ inquiry cutting across national histories and as an attempt to analyze relations among peoples, countries, and civilizations from perspectives other than those of power politics and economics.’ (Osterhammel, Petersson, 2005, pp. 19-20)

5. Conclusion

The essence of the phenomenon that is called ‘globalization’ was nobly summarized by David Livingstone, a pioneer medical missionary-explorer from Scotland, who stated that ‘the extension and the use of railroads, steamships, telegraphs, break down nationalities and bring people geographically remote into close connection… They make the world one.’ (Rosenberg, 2012, p. 815) The growing interconnectedness and interdependence as well as the compression of time and space could be witnessed following the intensification of global(izing) processes starting from the mid-nineteenth century.

As I have reasoned before, I believe the processes of integration cannot be entirely separated from the ones of fragmentation. I would definitely regard them as supplementary courses that are two sides of the same coin. In the first part of the paper, I was striving to argue that we cannot discuss the global(izing) processes of integration or fragmentation, but integration and fragmentation, for these practices proved to be complementary between the late 19th and early 20th century.

However, the question can be raised that if these processes are constantly interacting and producing both sets of outcomes, to what extent can we still speak of processes rather than a single process and to what extend are they truly complementary. I would argue that we should refer to processes due to the existence of multiple dimensions with globalization infiltrating not only into science and technology, but also culture, law and society. Despite the fact integration and fragmentation does not entire balance each other, I see the importance of complementarity in nature, not in effect. 

In the second part of the essay – in line with the definitions I chose to study – I reasoned that we may regard the global(izing) forces of unification and diversification in the given period as ‘global history’, since they essentially concentrate on the interplay between the local and global level through the domains of communication, transportation, sport, science and legal disciplines for example. In spite of discussing phenomena such as mobility, migration and cultural encounters between colonials and indigenous people, I would argue that the processes can be rather attached to ‘global’ than ‘world history’, because the subject of the historical analysis remains the whole integrated world and not all of humanity in general.

Gabor Sinko is a Master's degree student in International Studies at Aarhus University, Denmark.

6. References

6. 1. Bibliography

1. Conrad, Sebastian; Sachsenmaier, Dominic ‘Introduction’ in S. Conrad and D. Sachsenmaier (eds.) ‘Competing Visions of World Order: Global Moments and Movements, 1880s-1930s’, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
2. Kofman, Eleonore; Youngs, Gillian ‘Globalization: Theory and Practice’, Pinter Pub Ltd, 1996.
3. Mazlish, Bruce; Iriye Akira ’The Global History Reader’, New York and London, Routledge, 2005.
4. Olstein, Diego ’Thinking History Globally’, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
5. Osterhammel, Jürgen; Petersson, Niels P ‘Globalization: A Short History’, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005.
6. Rosenberg, Emily S ‘Transnational Currents in a Shrinking World’ in Emily S. Rosenberg (ed.) ‘A World Connecting, 1870-1945’, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2012.