Globalization and Globalism: From Ancient Sumer to Today

G. Richard Jansen, Emeritus Professor
Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado 80521
September 17, 2007
        
Introduction
    Globalization and globalism are realities in the world of today. Globalism is a policy that treats the whole world as a proper sphere for economic activity, trade, and political influence. Globalization is the process that leads to globalism by which the  known world has been growing larger and more inter-connected economically, politically and even culturally from the time of the ancient civilizations in Mesopotamia until today.  What distinguishes today’s globalism from that of ancient Sumer is that the known world is now the entire globe and not just the lands extended out from Mesopotamia and reachable by primitive means of transportation and communication. Technology and government and business structures have changed much with satellite communication, the world wide web and the internet and air travel linking all regions of the world. .  Human nature has not and mankind is still governed on the one hand by those innate passions Augustine called original sin
 and on the other by the moral codes of the great religions of the world and man made laws. In this essay we will start out with a brief review of important aspects of globalism from the ancient Sumerian civilization until today.  This will be followed by a discussion of issues raised.
    
Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt
    More than five millennia ago Sumerians settled in southern Mesopotamia.  This most ancient civilization known as Sumer lasted nearly two millennia before falling to Babylonia under Hammurabi in about 1730 B.C. It was followed by the Assyrian and Babylonian civilizations which ended when the Persian King Cyrus the Great captured Babylon in 539 B.C.  Cyrus is famous for many things. One of these is to allow the Jews in Babylon to return to Jerusalem thus ending the “Babylonian Captivity.”  Ancient Egypt was a civilization that lasted from roughly 3300 B.C. until conquered by Alexander the Great for Greece in 332 B.C. and later by Octavian for Rome in 30 B.C.  These ancient civilizations all developed along side of and were dominated by rivers, the Nile in Egypt, and in Mesopotamia, “the land between the rivers”, the Tigris and Euphrates.
    Transportation in these ancient civilizations was most reliable by river, but was workable via roads that before long became  well trodden and widened by many centuries of commercial traffic. During the Sumerian period a world system of trade developed extending to Anatolia to the northwest, Egypt to the southwest and Elam in Persia to the southeast.  Lebanon, Syria and what became the Holy Land were between Egypt and Mesopotamia, the  two superpowers ot their time, and served as a battleground for power, but also as a conduit for trade. The Assyrians instituted a widespread system of roads to facilitate their imperialistic ambitions. Mesopotamia was rich in agricultural product and hand manufactured items but poor in copper and tin which were needed to make bronze. From Anatolia and Persia they imported tin, and from Arabia and points south they imported copper, gold and ivory. Precious stones were imported from the Indus valley in India. There were merchants that dealt with the domestic markets, others with imports and exports and still others with transportation.
    Egypt was well supplied with agricultural commodities, and also was rich in gold and copper. As a result  metal working industries developed that produced many items of commerce. Important export products were agricultural commodities, papyrus and paper, and a wide variety of artifacts produced in its metal working industries. Imported products included wood which was in short supply and needed for many wood products such as furnitue, coffins and of course building supplies. also imported were ivory, some precious gems, minerals including silver, iron, lead and tin, and also myrrh, frankincense and fragrant woods.  In later years, trade around the Mediterranean Sea was dominated by Phoenicians traders.

Empire of Alexander the Great
    Alexander the Great  from Macedonia after conquering Greece conquered Persia in 333 B.C.  With this conquest he added to his realm the largest empire in the world at that time, an empire that spanned three continents.  Persia already had a well developed system of roads and trade routes. and transportation systems existed by both land and water, especially on the rivers.
Alexander’s  empire extended way beyond Macedonia, Greece and included Persia, Armenia. Egypt, Syria Palestine Afghanistan and the hind region of India.   He died in Babylon in 325 B.C. and ruled a scant twelve years.  But what an influential twelve years they were.  Trade expanded throughout this vast empire. Greece already required importation of large amounts of wheat from Egypt and Sicily to feed its people, and in turn exported olive oil, wine and pottery. Africa produced spices, ivory, incense, pearls and fine woods. From Syria and Egypt came glass, metals and linen.  After the death of Alexander his global world fractured.  India returned to its original rulers, the Greek city states regained their independence, Macedonia got a king, Ptolemy established his dynasty in Egypt and Selucid his dynasty in Egypt which reached  into Syria, Judea and Samaria.
    The Greek contributions to globalism did not come primarily from trade.  They derived from Greek philosophy, thoughts and ideas, and  most importantly from a common language and a common culture known as Hellenism that spread throughout  Alexander’s Empire.
    
The Roman Empire
    The Roman Empire succeeded the Roman Republic which had lasted from roughly the sixth century until the first century. The Empire is usually dated from Julius Caesar’s appointment as perpetual dictator in 44B.C. and the Roman Senate granting the title of Augustus to Octavian in 27 B.C. after his victory over Antony. Greece had been conquered by 146 B.C.  By 110 A.D.  The Roman Empire controlled all the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea, referring to this sea as Mare Nostrum, i.e. Our Sea, and most of Europe and Asia Minor.  Rome was famous for its construction and system of paved roads which radiated in all directions from Rome itself.  These roads facilitated warfare and also commerce.
    Peter Temin in the Economics Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology wrote the interesting working paper 01-08 dated February 2001 and entitled A Market Economy in the Early Roman Empire.  The author makes a convincing case for an extensive market in the Roman Empire that functioned as a comprehensive market for the entire Mediterranean region and beyond.  Capital was raised by interest bearing loans and prices were set by the market in goods and services not by a command economy.  Coins were commonly used as the method of payment.
    Will Durant, in his volume entitled Caesar and Christ well summarized the vast number and variety of goods that were involved in this market:   “From Sicily came corn, cattle, hides, wine, wool, fine woodwork, statuary, jewelry; from north Africa corn and oil; from Cyrenaica silphium; from central Africa wild beasts for the arena; from Ethiopia and east Africa ivory, apes, tortoise shell, rare marbles, obsiddian, spices and Negro slaves, from west Africa oil, beasts, citron, wood, pearls, dyes, copper; from Spain fish, cattle, wool, gold, silver, lead, tin, copper, iron, cinnabar, wheat, linen, cork, horses, ham, bacon, and the finest olives and olive oil; from Gaul clothing, wine, wheat, timber, vegetables, cattle, poultry, pottery, cheese; from Britain tin, lead, silver, hides, wheat, cattle, slaves, oysters, dogs, pearls, and wooden goods. From Belgium flocks of geese were driven all the way to Italy to supply goose livers for aristocratic bellies. From Germany came amber, slaves, and furs; from the Danube wheat, cattle, iron, silver, and gold; from Greece and the Greek isles cheap silk, linen, wine, oil, honey, timber, marble, emeralds, drugs, artworks, perfumes, diamonds, and gold. From the Black Sea came com, fish, furs, hides, slaves; from Asia Minor fine linen and woolen fabrics, parchment, wine, Smyrna and other figs, honey, cheese, oysters, carpets, oil, wood; from Syria wine, silk, linen, glass, oil, apples, pears, plums, figs, dates, pomegranates, nuts, nard, balsam, Tyrian purple, and the cedar of Lebanon; from Palmyra textiles, perfumes, drugs; from Arabia incense, gums, aloes, myrrh, laudanum, ginger, cinnamon, and precious stones; from Egypt com, paper, linen, glass, jewelry, granite, basalt, alabaster, and porphyry. Finished products of a thousand kinds came to Rome and the West from Alexandria, Sidon, Tyre, Antioch, Tarsus, Rhodes, Miletus, Ephesus, and the other great cities of the East, while the East received raw materials and money from the West.”
    The longest lasting legacy of the Roman Republic and subsequent Empire is Roman law. Roman law developed over a thousand year span from the twelve tables of law in 449 B.C. to the Corpus Juris Civilis of Justinian I in 530 A.D. Law as preserved in these Justinian codes became the basis of legal practice not only in the Roman Empire but also later in th Byzantine Empire and continental Europe until the end of the 18th century and the Napoleonic code. The legal system of today is full of legal terms such as stare decisis, a reflection of a heritage from Roman law.
    In the Roman Empire, as has usually been the case, wealth and power were not distributed equally among the population.  This is a consequence of the fact that human abilities and human drive are not distributed equally within the general population either. In the early days of the Republic power and wealth were both in the hands of the Patrician class who were aristocratic land owners. The rest of the populations were Plebians.  Over time many Plebians became wealthy through trade and wanted a share of the power. They fought for and obtained power as Tribunes and consuls and for a limited time were able to veto legislation coming out of the Senate.
    The Roman Senate was aristocratic and the location of all political, legislative and administrative power was in Rome.  The sovereignty of the Empire eventually ended up totally in the Senate which named Caesar Dictator and later Octavian Augustus.
    
The Crusades
    The Islamic conquests of the 7th to 11th centuries had the result of incorporating much of the knowledge and skills of the previous Mesopotamian, Persian, Greek and Roman Empires into the Islamic world.  Western Europe at that time was more primitive in many ways than was the Islamic world.  The presence of the Christian crusader states for nearly two centuries in the Holy Lands stimulated a transfer of much knowledge and skills from the Islamic world to the West.  Also trade was stimulated.

The Age of Discovery
    Throughout the long history of mankind there have been many ages and events of discovery.  In connection with this essay on the globalism of today we refer to that period from the late 15th until the early 17th century when European explorers discovered North and South America, Australia and New Zealand.  At that time Europe was well familiar with Russia and Asia including  India and the Orient. Indeed they were part of the Old World.  The age of discovery in the sense of this essay started with the voyages of Columbus in the 1492 and for the most part ended with the Plymouth settlement in 1620.
    Economic and religious interests were behind the voyages to the New World which were, however, carried out by men driven by adventure and the challenges of new discoveries. We see that same drive in the individuals who are personally and most directly  involved in space exploration today. Yes there may be military and national security interests involved but astronauts, for example, are also driven by the need for adventure and exploration. Thus has it always been so for mankind.
    The primary economic engine that powered events during the age of discovery was trade. When land routes to India and the Orient were blocked to Europeans at least partially in Muslim lands new sea routes were sought.  The first sea route developed was around the southern tip of Africa, the Cape of Good Hope followed by a sea route around the southern tip of South America, Cape Horn. A prime factor driving the exploration of North America was a “northwest passage” to the Pacific, never found.    Besides the wealth derived from trade ,the desire for gold and silver further drove the exploration of North and South America by the Spanish and Portuguese.  
    The other major force driving exploration of the New World and the Orient as well was to spread Christianity. Spanish and Portuguese explorers were accompanied by Catholic priests to convert the heathen Indians to Christ. It took the Pope to decide that Brazil would be Portuguese and the rest of South America, along with Mexico and California, Spanish. These conquistadors were driven by a need for adventure, and gold and silver primarily.  English settlements in Massachusetts were settled by Protestant dissenters from the Church of England who wanted a place where they could practice their religious faith unhindered by a higher church authority.  The English colony of Jamestown in Virginia was settled by entrepreneurs interested in a better and more prosperous life and also one that followed the Protestant faith and traditions
    As a result of the age of discovery Christianity was established in North and South America, Australia, New Zealand. and much of Africa. In spite of extensive missionary activity India, China and Japan were relatively impervious to Christianity in contrast to Korea where Christianity found reasonably fertile soil.

Imperialism and Colonialism
    Imperialism and colonialism have been part of the history of the world, in that age old phrase “from time immemorial.”  What we are dealing with in this essay is the imperialism and colonialism that was a bridge between the age of discovery as discussed above and the globalism of today.  Colonialism and imperialism are so similar that one definition can be used for both;
    “the policy, practice, or advocacy of extending the power and dominion of a nation especially by direct territorial acquisitions or by gaining indirect control over the political or economic life of other areas; broadly : the extension or imposition of power, authority, or influence.” An early form of colonialism involved mercantilism; “an economic system developed to increase the monetary wealth of a nation by a strict government regulation of the entire economy through policies designed to secure an accumulation of bullion, a favorable balance of trade, the development of agriculture and manufactures, and the establishment of foreign trading monopolies.”  Mercantilism led to the mistake of the Spanish in believing that the wealth results from piling up vast amounts of gold bullion, the foolishness of which Adam Smith exposed in his book  The Wealth of Nations.  Some of the economic imperatives of mercantilism, those that placed colonies in the position of being economically subservient to the mother country, caused the British to abuse their American Colonies thus indirectly leading to the American Revolution.
    The age of discovery led to European exploration of vast areas of Africa, North and South America, Australia and New Zealand, the Pacific Islands and Asia. It was driven by the economic, scientific, technological , military and demographic power of Europe. Exploration was followed by large scale emigration from Europe to these newly established colonies where European power and sovereignty held sway. Portugal early on established colonies in Africa, South America and Asia. Spain established colonies extensively in both North and South America, and in the Philippine Islands. France laid claim to Quebec in what became Canada but lost this claim to the British. France also established colonies in Africa and the Levant. France also occupied Indo-China. Both Britain and France had extensive holdings in the West Indies where much sugar was raised using a brutal slave economy where slaves had a short life expectancy in sharp contrast to slavery in the American colonies of North America. The Dutch established colonies in what became known as the Dutch East Indies. The Germans came late to colonialism with a colony in East Africa, Great Britain with its large powerful navy became probably the greatest colonial power with colonies in North America, Australia, Canada, India, Ceylon and Africa.
    European powers vied for power and influence in China and Japan leading in the case of China to an international area of European sovereignty in Shanghai, the opium wars and the Boxer Rebellion.  In Japan fierce European rivalries led to the Open Door policy enunciated by Theodore Roosevelt. Often forgotten is that the Union Of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was a gigantic colonial empire established first by the Russian Czar and then re-established by the Bolsheviks after the Russian Revolution of 1917.  Japan came late to colonialism and in the 1930's tried to establish under its rule a Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere in Asia, the East Indies, China and Manchuria.  This led to war with the United States and Great Britain in 1941.

Globalism Today
    By the middle of the 20th century the age of imperialism and colonialism was pretty much spent. The United States, Canada, Australia and Canada had led the way much earlier. Independence movements spread throughout the world and with very few exceptions all European colonies in Africa, North and South America, the Pacific Islands and Asia became independent sovereign countries. The USSR, which was indeed an Empire that had been put together by the Russian Czars, collapsed in 1991 and all its territories  outside Russia itself became independent countries after the end of World War II in1945.  
    Western imperialism and colonialism along with many other factors led to the globalism of today. Following the failure of socialism to provide economic growth and security, the globalism of today is characterized by the ascendency of the ideology of private property, free markets, reduced trade barriers and the  free movement of goods and labor across national borders. Also involved are  multinational corporations multilateral trade agreements and international agencies to adjudicate trade disputes. The fall of communism in the Soviet Union followed by the failure of socialism all over the world strengthened the hand of advocates of free markets such as Hayek and others from the Austrian school of economic theory.
    In a global free-market oriented economy, capital will flow to locations where investments are the most secure and return on capital the highest. Manufacturers will seek locations where the costs of raw material and labor are  low, and where government imposed costs and impediments to manufacture are low. Manufacturers will seek the widest expansion of markets relatively free from tariffs and other costs. Manufacturers will look for locations with world wide systems of communication and banking . This will facilitate the ability of  needed business service operations to be outsourced to locations with a high availability of well trained and relatively low cost workers. Manufacturers will locate manufacturing plants where raw material and labor costs are low.  
    The global economy of today has resulted in a wide availability of low cost consumer goods and a strong consumer economy. It has generated much wealth. Even Marx understood that capitalism was the engine that had been most successful in producing wealth.. However his concern was wealth distribution, and  his solutions turned out to be gigantic failures.  Because of the concern over wealth distribution, the globalism of today has resulted in a strong and violent anti-globalism movement on the part of the political left.  Although there are opponents of globalism as we understand it on both the political right and left for different reasons, it is only the left that is violent. There have been violent riots in the streets of Seattle, Genoa, Quebec and other cities when international meeting dealing with trade are being held. The rhetoric of these demonstrators is pure Marxist with a strong admixture of Lenin’s criticism of imperialism.

Discussion
    Globalization is the constellation of factors and events that leads to what is called globalism.. In other words, globalism is a work in progress.  Globalism results from increasingly inter-connected peoples and countries in the world, especially through trade. Globalization is driven by the revolution in world wide communication capabilities, air travel and banking that has shrunk the globe.  It also follows the post-colonial period, the failure of socialism, although not yet completely dead, and the rise of capitalism, free markets and a market  economy.
    In some ways globalization is following a similar trajectory as did the United States as we went from being separate British colonies in the early 17th century, a confederation of united but sovereign states in 1781, a federal Constitutional Republic in 1787 to the United States as the nation we became after the Civil War. After independence was won from the British the former colonies under the Articles of Confederation became  independent and mostly sovereign states joined in a very loose association. It became very apparent by 1787 for many reasons including interior barriers, trade, issuance of money and national defense, that the individual states needed to give up considerable sovereignty for the common good. A strong central government was needed.
    The brilliant solution was a Federal Republic where states retained considerable autonomy over their own affairs but ceding much power to the central government with a strong executive.  The issue of a strong central government was hotly debated and opposed as well as supported. The Constitution was only ratified by the states after receiving assurance that a Bill of Rights would be added to the Constitution. as amendments. The Bill of Rights protected individual rights from being curtailed especially by the Federal government.  As a further protection against federal encroachment on the states the Tenth Amendment said this: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
    It took a bloody civil war with a million war dead to settle and limit the extent of state sovereignty.  It became clear that state sovereignty did not include any possibility of leaving the Union. This issue was settled on the battlefield not in the courts. Another example is that it took fifty years for the United States government to put down a rebellious and violent Mormon theocracy claiming complete sovereignty in the Utah territory ( Forgotten Kingdom: The Mormon Theocracy in the American West 1847-1896,  David L. Bigler, Utah State University Press, 1998)  As an aside, we should be a little more patient with what Iraq is trying to do in a few years that it took us a hundred years to accomplish. The point here is that we in the United States did not solve our governmental problems easily even though we were blessed with a common language and a common culture. Recently Samuel Huntington is his book  Who are We?concluded that even after several hundred years of immigration what is now known as The American Creed is a secular version of the Anglo Protestant Creed came over over from England with the settlers at our very beginnings.
    Of course we live in the 21st not the 18th century and we need to confront the issues of sovereignty, trade, language and cultural differences, and social and economic inequalities as they exist today.  There are strong forces in the world that drive globalization.  Not surprisingly strong anti-globalization  movements have developed on both the political left and the political right.     The anti-globalization of the political left, which has resulted in violent demonstrations all over the world, is driven primarily by concerns over economic inequalities.  Thus has it ever been since the levelers in England in the 17th century and Babeauf in France in the 18th century.  The  anti-globalists of the political left also are Marxist in orientation and violently oppose capitalism, free markets, a market economy and especially multi-national companies.  Violently is the appropriate word.  Marx had written that capitalism had been an extremely successful economic system and mus proceed the implementation of communism/socialism.  He believed that capitalism contained the seeds of its own destruction.  He was wrong.
    The anti-globalists of the left believe that capitalism and multi-national companies are evil incarnate. It goes without saying that in their view the United States is evil incarnate squared.  It is their contention and fervent belief that capitalism and free markets operation in a global marketplace will result in more and more people mired in poverty at the expense of an increasingly wealthy elite. Of course this is what Marx and others had predicted would happen in the 19th century.  The reality is that it was socialism/ communism that failed, not capitalism. As Hayek pointed out, a command economy even in only a single country cannot and has not worked. This is even more the case in a global economy.  In addition one cannot legislate equality of economic outcome without coercion and loss of liberty.  
    It is accurately charged that multi-national companies seek to maximize profits and locate where wages are low.  However it is the case that world trade acts to spread and redistribute wealth not the converse. It is historically true that those countries in the world that have been the most isolated from the world economy are also the poorest.  A recent world-wide poll by the Pew Foundation as reported in Yale Global Online found that there was more enthusiasm for foreign trade and investments in developing counties than in developed countries.  It is clear that the world cannot exist indefinitely with an island of wealth in a sea of poverty.  It should be equally clear that the way to correct this problem is not foreign aid from the industrialized world which has been inherently corrupting. The answer rather is for the poorer countries in the world to participate more actively in the world economy through business and agricultural development and trade. The wrath of the anti-globalist left has been expressed repeatedly by violent protests at meetings all over the world of the World Trade Organization and othe organizations associated with world trade issues.  This is ironic and self-defeating since it is these very organizations that are needed to curb excesses and illegalities in world trade and the global economy.
    The over-riding concern of the anti-globalist political right is loss of sovereignty, a legitimate concern. Sovereignty is supreme power over a body politic. A country can lose sovereignty by being conquered or secondary to a greater power imposing its will. An example of the first is what happened to Germany and Japan after losing World War II.  An example of the second is when the European powers in the 19th and early 20th centuries imposed their will on a weaker Ottoman Empire requiring it to stop discriminating so flagrantly against Christian and Jews.  They were only marginally successful. Still another example is when countries voluntarily give up sovereignty, political and economic,  as European countries have done to enter the European Union. It is not clear at this point how far this loss of sovereignty will go and whether or not the European elites in Brussels reflect the will or even the best interests of the European people.
    The United States is in no danger of losing any sovereignty under force or duress although newspapers and magazines in the United States have given up their right of free expression of ideas in response to threats or even imagined threats from Militant Islam. The concern of the political right is loss of sovereignty by treaty, international agreement or by virtue of membership in an international organization like the United Nations or the World Trade organization. When the United States or indeed any country enters into treaties or international agreements it usually does involve ceding some measure of national sovereignty but it does so with the calculation the benefits and advantages clearly exceed the disadvantages. If that is not the case any country can , if necessary nullify the agreement, so such losses of sovereignty are never  permanent. In the United States an addition protection against unwise or hasty action is that any treaty agreed to by the President must be ratified by two thirds of members in the Senate. An example is the Kyoto protocol on greenhouse gas emissions which President Clinton afer signing never submitted to the Senate for ratification and which the Senate indicated by a nearly unanimous vote that it would not have ratified it anyway. The United States has never recognized the authority of the World Court in Brussels but does recognize the International Court of Justice in The Hague.      
    Globalization is a fact of life that for the United States is not reversible without very adverse consequences. A prior example is the devastating effects on the American economy  by the very protectionist Smoot-Hawley tariff in 1932.  The world today is tied together by air travel and nearly instantaneous communication systems and banking. World trade is flourishing. It is far better that so called third world countries develop economically by trade rather than handouts and foreign aid.  There is no turning back from globalization in the economic arena. However, as Jeremy Rabkin argues forcefully in his book The Case for Sovereignty (AEI Press, Washington DC 2004) the existence of national governments with sovereignty remain indispensable in the world order and sovereignty must never be traded away for anything other than the national interest.

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