A Brief History of Globalization

From the Silk Road's camel caravans carrying silk and spices between empires, to the telegraph cables that shrank the world to a pulse of electricity, and from the shipping container's quiet revolution to the fiber-optic networks that move data across continents in milliseconds, A Brief History of Globalisation traces the epic, millennia-long story of how the world became woven together. This sweeping narrative follows the great waves of connection—the Mongol peace that opened Eurasia, the Iberian voyages that launched the Columbian Exchange, the British-led age of free trade and steamships, the post-1945 Bretton Woods order, and the hyperglobalisation of the last four decades that tied China's factories to America's shopping malls. Along the way, it introduces the dreamers and exploiters, the merchants and migrants, the industrialists and revolutionaries who drove—or resisted—the shrinking of distance, revealing how globalisation remade not just economies but cuisines, cultures, pandemics, and the very way humans imagine their place on the planet.

But is globalisation an irresistible tide of progress or a story of winners and losers written in blood and exploited labor? This book does not flinch from the contradictions: the global supply chains that lifted a billion from poverty while hollowing out industrial heartlands, the financial flows that sparked crises from Mexico to Thailand, the pandemic that exposed the fragility of just-in-time everything, and the nationalist backlash that now threatens the system globalisation built. From the spice trade's brutal monopolies to the climate crisis that knows no borders, A Brief History of Globalisation is an essential, balanced guide to the most powerful force shaping our world—and the uncertain future of connection in an age of walls, tariffs, and pandemics.