Deglobalization: A Political History

By Nick Rice

Chapter 1: First Deglobalization - Emergence

I first celebrated the Fourth of July when I was eleven, at a pool party hosted by American friends in the UK. Kids and parents swam and snacked on sausages, each pinned with a miniature Stars and Stripes. On the TV, two US players were contesting a Wimbledon tennis final, a symbol of Americans beating Brits at their own game.

The party took place in 1993. Two years earlier, the US had defeated the Soviet Union in the Cold War, a series of tensions that dominated global politics for over four decades but never caused a direct conflict between the two countries. The USSR split up into fifteen different nations, the largest being Russia. America became the world’s undisputed superpower.

The US and its major allies, including the UK, turned into hubs that connected the entire world together. They supplied it with money and an array of other resources. Our American friends embodied this peak phase of globalization, moving between continents with multinational companies like Pepsi and Cadbury Schweppes.

Globalization initially appeared in the sixteenth century, when explorers first sailed around the world and connected every habitable part of it together. Since then, it has encompassed not just economic activities like trade and investment, but also travel, migration, and political and cultural relations.

New technologies have also played a role. In the sixteenth century, one early example was larger ships with multiple masts, which crossed oceans more easily than smaller single-masted peers. Since then, many other inventions have helped people travel and communicate globally, including trains, cars, aircraft, telegraphs, telephones, broadcast media, and the internet.

Starting in the sixteenth century, various European nations – Britain, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, and Spain – used globalization to build world-spanning empires. Each of these encompassed at least one territory in each of three regions: the Americas in the west; Europe and sometimes Africa in the center; and Asia and/or Oceania in the east.

In the imperial arena, Britain became the ultimate frontrunner. In the late seventeenth century, it sparked the Enlightenment, which championed reason and science. In the eighteenth century, it kickstarted the Industrial Revolution. In 1763, it became the undisputed leading global power, defeating its rival France in the Seven Years’ War.

However, although this system of globalization was powerful and growing, it was inevitable that a nation or people would break with it. Nowadays, we would term that deglobalization. In the eighteenth century, when the first break occurred, it was described differently. Nevertheless, it kicked off what we might describe as deglobalization’s first era.

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Two years after the Seven Years’ War, Britain started trying to impose additional taxes on its American colonies. A group of Americans organized resistance. In 1775, the American Revolutionary War broke out between the two sides. In 1776, on the Fourth of July, the US declared independence. In 1783, it won the war and took full control over its own affairs.

America’s break-up with Britain caused it to split off from a global empire and from the existing system of globalization. For the first time, a European empire had lost control of a major colony and some of the economic relationships that accompanied it. To that extent, American independence started the first era of deglobalization.

However, as with many later acts of deglobalization, independence did not ultimately cause America to sever ties with the world and retreat into its shell. Over time, splitting off from the existing system of globalization gave the US greater flexibility in building its own power base – starting largely in the Americas, then expanding to include the rest of the world.

In the nineteenth century, a new system of globalization took shape. Deglobalization and reglobalization started to move in cycles, which are explored in detail in later chapters. The US became well placed to help drive that system and benefit from it. During the twentieth century, it would overtake Britain as the top superpower and globalization’s world leader.

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The forces driving deglobalization have often been political. This is why politics looms large in this book, although I also examine its interplay with economics, culture, and other areas. In particular, globalization has given its Western and European sponsor nations such strength that major political forces have regularly been required to disrupt it.

In our own era, politics has played a clear role in many events that have driven deglobalization. These have included the eurozone crisis, the Arab Spring, Brexit, US-China tensions, COVID, and Russia’s invasions of Ukraine. These events have fueled deglobalization in other areas, including business and migration.

Similarly, reglobalization was only able to gain significant ground when the political tide turned away from deglobalization. In the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries, for instance, reglobalization benefited from major nations expanding their colonial networks, opening up to free trade, and converging around similar political models.

Elements of globalization have also persisted even when deglobalization appears to have the upper hand. In our own era, the internet has made global communications much easier, even as it created fragmented online communities that supported divergence and deglobalization.

In 1993, as we celebrated the Fourth of July in the UK, we were unaware that deglobalization might be taking root again, albeit in a much more troubling way. In February that year, Islamist terrorists bombed the World Trade Center in New York. In 2001, they crashed planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing and injuring thousands of people.

The US and its allies subsequently launched a global war on terrorism. Deglobalization had returned, but in the opposite form to the Revolutionary War. In the eighteenth century, the US fought for liberty by standing up to the existing system of globalization. In the twenty-first, it also fought for liberty, but by standing up to the global terrorist threat.

In the political arena, deglobalization continued its re-emergence. With the global financial crisis, the economic arena would follow suit. Since the sixteenth century, globalization has been a continual presence in our lives. However, our era has also proved that, since the original Fourth of July, deglobalization has never permanently receded.

Chapter 2: First Deglobalization - Escalation?

Britain and France have been rivals since well before the Seven Years’ War. Both are well-resourced countries, and large by European standards. Their Atlantic coastlines helped them develop trade networks and send settlers abroad. Throughout much of the past three centuries, the sheer scale of their empires and cultural influence made them the leading global powers.

In the later eighteenth century, France lost to Britain in the Seven Years’ War, a global conflict in which Britain gained a number of French territories. France also fought for the US during its War of Independence. Among other factors, these conflicts helped strain France’s finances. Its king and queen, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, lost much of their political clout.

The king and queen’s home was the Palace of Versailles near Paris. Luxury doesn’t begin to describe it. The best-known room was the Hall of Mirrors, which featured 357 mirrors, 17 arches, 30 paintings by a top French artist, and columns crowned with gilded bronze. The palace’s park spanned 800 hectares and had its own grand canal.

Towards the end of the 1780s, the palace’s opulence contrasted jarringly with France’s dire financial situation. Nevertheless, in May 1789, Louis convened an assembly at Versailles to find a solution. Some representatives set up a separate National Assembly and attempted to create an American-style constitution.

On July 14, revolutionaries seized the royal Bastille fortress in the center of Paris. Louis ceded power to the Assembly. The French Revolution, as it became known, reduced Louis to a figurehead and thrust one of the world’s leading powers into turmoil. The consequences of the revolution would ultimately cause deglobalization to escalate.

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The 1789 uprising was national in scope. However, it also had overseas ramifications. In 1791, black slaves in Haiti broke away from France’s empire. Within thirteen years, Toussaint Louverture, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, and other black leaders would help the Caribbean nation achieve independence.

Like the US’s divorce from the UK, Haiti’s break-up from France was an example of deglobalization. The French Revolution also triggered global conflicts between France and Europe’s other empires that would last almost a quarter of a century. These wars affected the existing system of globalization and took deglobalization to new heights.

The conflicts started after other monarchies grew anxious over the revolution and the fate of Louis and Marie Antoinette. In central Europe, the German state of Prussia threatened France with military action, as did two major empires led out of Austria. In 1792, France declared war on Austria, kicking off the French Revolutionary Wars.

The French Revolutionary Wars lasted until 1802 and would be followed swiftly by the Napoleonic Wars, which ended in 1815. Although globalization had entailed a few global conflicts, none of them lasted nearly as long or cost as many lives. The two conflicts disfigured global politics, travel, and trade. They would also cause even more nations to deglobalize.

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The French Revolutionary Wars, which included the Wars of the First and Second Coalitions, pitted France against coalitions of rivals like Britain, as well as Russia and its empress Catherine the Great. European powers fought globally in regions where they had territories, disrupting travel, economic activity, and broader international relations.

The biggest beneficiary of the French Revolutionary Wars was a Corsican general named Napoleon. In the War of the First Coalition, which lasted until 1797, he achieved prominence by helping France to victory. In the War of the Second Coalition, which lasted from 1798 to 1802, he seized control of the country in a coup and handed its enemies another defeat.

France’s leaders were completely recasting French society. As part of this, in 1793, they executed Louis and Marie Antoinette. Britain and other nations took a more conservative approach. The backlash against France’s radical version of the Enlightenment contributed to the rise of Romanticism, a movement that emphasized tradition as well as individual and national rights.

In this context, the French Revolutionary Wars were just an escalation of deglobalization and other tensions. They did not yet represent the peak. That would come with the Napoleonic Wars, which began in 1803. For the time being, the world would enjoy a well-deserved breather until France and Britain’s rivalry resumed.

Chapter 3: First Deglobalization - Peak?

The UK and South Africa are at opposite ends of the planet. Except for nations with Arctic territory, the UK is one of the most northerly European countries. With no ice, it would be possible to sail in a straight line from its tip to the North Pole. South Africa is the southernmost part of Africa, with no land mass between it and Antarctica.

During the Napoleonic era, Britain’s possessions in South Africa consisted solely of the Cape, its southernmost region. The Cape is now a remarkable mix of cityscapes, poorer settlements, vineyards, coastlines, safari, eclectic languages, and rare flowers. Two centuries previously, however, turbulence in the Cape showed the sheer reach of deglobalization.

In 1795, the British took over the colony after France occupied the Netherlands. It handed it back in 1803, only to take it over again as part of the Napoleonic Wars in 1805. The region bounced from empire to empire for a decade, disrupting its role in the existing system of globalization.

During the Wars, deglobalization reached its peak. France and its rivals fought across Europe. Spain battled unrest in Latin America. The British invaded parts of Argentina, Uruguay, and Indonesia. Even the US, which tried to stay neutral, entered the fray. The entire world, including outposts like the Cape, would have to wait over a decade for the fighting to cease.

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The maneuvering began even before the wars themselves. In 1803 France sold Louisiana to the US to stop Britain from seizing it. A major territory controlled by a global power was now shifting to a regional counterpart, doubling the size of the US overnight. The sale accelerated the process of deglobalization that America’s East Coast had started three decades before.?

That same year, France embarked on a new conflict with Britain, without having to worry about Louisiana falling into the wrong hands. This conflict would morph into the War of the Third Coalition, the first salvo in the Napoleonic Wars. France emerged victorious and gained control of the Confederation of the Rhine, a group of German states by the French border.

In 1806, France’s opponents, including Britain and Russia, assembled another alliance and initiated the Fourth Coalition War. In 1807, France again won the conflict and gained control over part of Prussia. This included German-speaking territory in central Europe as well as part of modern-day Poland.

In 1807, the Peninsular War broke out in southwestern Europe between France on the one hand and Portugal and Spain on the other. It lasted until 1814, when French forces abandoned the region. The French would also win the War of the Fifth Coalition in 1809, annexing the Pope’s city of Rome along with his territories.

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The global age had witnessed large European conflicts before. These mostly caused territories to move from one empire to another, without ultimately derailing the existing system of globalization. But the disruption caused by France was so powerful that it introduced an element of what we would term deglobalization.

One example was the Continental System, a trade embargo against France’s rivals. Another was France’s invasion of Spain, which led many colonies in Latin America to rise up against Spanish rule. Most importantly, the overall length and intensity of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars took global tensions to an unsurpassed level.

France ultimately found its nemesis in Russia, in the brutal weather of 1812. It invaded the country that summer and occupied Moscow. However, its army later retreated in the face of resistance and lost more than half its troops due to cold and other hardships. On both sides, hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians died during the campaign.

With the country’s troops decimated, Napoleon lost control of France after further sparring with its European rivals. He escaped captivity and launched a final war against his opponents, which he lost at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. After Waterloo, he went into exile for good. The Napoleonic Wars were finally over.

Chapter 4: First Deglobalization - Outcome

After the French Revolutionary and the Napoleonic Wars, Russia didn’t have the same hostility to the West that it did after the World Wars. The Cold War that followed the World Wars had no precise nineteenth-century equivalent. Nevertheless, a rivalry lingered between Russia and other European powers and formed a notable outcome of the first era of deglobalization.

The earliest example was the tension between Russia and the Ottoman Empire, which had flared up on and off for centuries. The empire was headquartered in Istanbul in modern-day Turkey and spanned three regions on three continents – Southeast Europe, West Asia, and North Africa.

Following the Napoleonic Wars, Greece remained under Ottoman control. In 1821, Greek rebels started a war of independence against the empire. After six years, Russia, Britain, and France intervened, wiping out an Ottoman fleet at the Battle of Navarino. Russia subsequently fought a short war with Turkey, after which Greece secured its independence.

Nevertheless, politically speaking, Russia was very different from Britain and France. In 1825, authorities adopted a more conservative stance that lasted for decades, following a revolt by a progressive group known as the Decembrists. Tensions between Russia and the other two empires would later culminate in the Crimean War.

Russia and Greece’s nationalism was part of a broader trend. After the Napoleonic Wars, individuals and peoples became less interested in setting aside their historic interests in favor of a more reasoned approach. This movement, known as Romanticism, opposed France’s divisive attempts to impose its vision of the Enlightenment on the world at large.

The flip side was that Romanticism was less interested in objective truths that might bind people together. Individualism, nationalism, and historical norms were the order of the day. As Greece proved, this environment was still fragmented, which represented an important outcome of deglobalization’s initial age.

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For history-loving Romantics, Rome was an important center. The city has served as the capital of two Roman empires, the Catholic Church, and (more recently) the nation of Italy. The city has unsurpassed range of historical sights, from classical ruins to the Vatican.

In 1819, Rome played host to one of the more famous Romantic couples, who explored its history from the classical era to the present. Mary Shelley was a novelist and the author of Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, which was published a year earlier. Percy Bysshe Shelley was a poet and the author of the play Prometheus Unbound.

With its famous artificial monster, Frankenstein examined the darker side of science and reason. Prometheus Unbound was a more upbeat rendering of the classical Promethean legend, in which a god helps mankind build civilization. Percy said he wrote it mostly in Rome, specifically the ruins of an ancient public bathhouse.

The Romantics went on to be strong supporters of the Greek revolt, and of restoring some of Greece’s historical glories as an independent nation. But the new passion for national self-determination did not extend solely to nations of the past. It also helped create countries from scratch.

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Another outcome of nationalism’s rise was the continued break-up of European empires in the Americas. When France took over Spain, some of its Latin American colonies witnessed unrest. After the Napoleonic Wars, Spanish and Portuguese colonies declared independence. The brand-new nations covered the vast majority of Latin America’s landmass.

The most prominent leader of these revolts was the Romantic revolutionary Simón Bolivar. Bolivar was born in Venezuela and lost his wife María Teresa to illness just eight months after their wedding. He poured his grief into politics, driving the liberation of a number of Latin American colonies and serving as president of Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia.

Once independent, some colonies would subdivide even further. For instance, the Federal Republic of Central America collapsed to form Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and parts of Belize and Mexico. New Granada fizzled into Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Panama, Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela, and parts of Surinam and other states.

Even in 1815, Bolivar wrote: “Success will crown our efforts, because the destiny of America has been irrevocably decided; the tie that bound her to Spain has been severed. Only a concept maintained that tie and kept the parts of that immense monarchy together… It would be easier to have the two continents meet than to reconcile the spirit of the two countries.”??

These developments were a blow not only to Spain but also to Portugal, which would lose control of Brazil. The first phase reinforced the rise of the US, in that it reduced Europe’s ability to interfere in the Americas and confirmed the US as the emerging leader across two continents. Nevertheless, within few years, globalization would start clawing back its supremacy.?

Chapter 5: First Reglobalization - Emergence

Every movement has its definitive moments. In the case of reglobalization, one of them was the dawn of the new millennium. Countries that the Cold War and other factors had divided would unite to celebrate as a single planet. An economic boom and the advent of the internet made the celebration even easier to support and coordinate.

In the year 2000, I first visited Spain. At the time, the country embodied reglobalization. It was a key part of the EU and the euro. It had a deep history in the Americas, North Africa, and East Asia. And tourists came from around the world to enjoy its weather, scenery, and culture.

In the early nineteenth century, however, Spain had to manage one of the biggest events in deglobalization’s history, when it lost almost all its colonies in the Americas. However, after 1825, the bleeding stopped. Spain and Europe’s other global powers managed to hold onto the rest of their territories. And some of them were acquiring new colonies in Asia and Africa.

In 1819, the UK founded the trading hub of Singapore as a challenge to Dutch dominance in southeast Asia. In 1824, it laid claim to territory north of the new settlement that it would ultimately transform into Malaysia. In 1826, it took over parts of nearby Myanmar following the First Anglo-Burmese War.

In 1830, France expanded its influence in northern Africa by invading and later annexing Algeria. In 1843, Britain grew its holdings in southern Africa by annexing Natal. During the prior decade, it had already sent more settlers to expand its presence there as well as in Australia. Migration would remain critical to building out Europe’s empires.

In North America, the US also expanded westwards. The US was not yet a global power, but the territories it acquired would be a foundation of its global success. In 1845, it annexed Texas, which later became an energy giant. In 1848, it took over various states from Mexico, notably California. Again, migration from the east helped the US develop its territories in the west.

During this period, global free trade also gained momentum. The most famous example was the repeal of Britain’s Corn Laws, which freed up new supplies of food. The world moved away from mercantilism, whereby Western countries and their colonies only traded within their own empires, and towards a regime where they traded beyond imperial borders.

Such events drove the emergence of the first era of reglobalization. Technology would play an important supportive role. This phase witnessed the introduction of passenger railways, the evolution of steamships, and the invention of the telegraph, the generator, and the photograph. Further advances would underpin reglobalization as it continued to gather pace.

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In addition to their exploits overseas, European powers also took steps towards greater unity across the continent itself. In 1831, Italy was still divided into smaller states. A few territories rose up in support of a united Italy and called themselves the Italian United Provinces, although the uprising failed within weeks.

Germany was another collection of territories that was trending towards national unification. In 1833, it introduced the Zollverein, a customs union that eased trading barriers between German states. In 1838, the Zollverein standardized the use of currencies by its members. Like Italy, Germany completed its unification in 1871 and later transformed into a colonial force.

However, beyond Europe, reglobalization also had a much darker side. In 1839, a Chinese imperial official called Lin Zexu wrote to Britain’s Queen Victoria in protest at the opium trade. British merchants had long exported opium to China, which was cracking down on what it rightly saw as a detrimental practice.

“We have heard that in your own country opium is prohibited with the utmost strictness and severity,” he wrote. “This is a strong proof that you know full well how hurtful it is to mankind. Since you do not permit it to injure your own country, you ought not to have the injurious drug transferred to another country.”

However, despite China’s pleas, the flow of opium never stopped, and Britain stepped in to defend its merchants. From 1839 to 1842, Britain and China fought one another in what became known as the First Opium War. Britain emerged victorious and forced China to hand over the trading port of Hong Kong. The subjugation of China in its own region had begun.

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Overall, closer ties within and between continents led to the emergence of the first era of reglobalization. Reglobalization profited from globalization’s tailwinds – technological progress, economic advances, exploration and migration, and expanding political and cultural connections.

However, the first era of reglobalization would also proceed according to the same four phases as deglobalization’s first era. Both eras emerged after a major international war, although it took a long time for them to become dominant. Both escalated through revolutions and initial conflicts. Both peaked with a second set of conflicts. Both ended in outcomes that reshaped the globe.

The world would then repeat this cycle. A second era of deglobalization would be followed by a second era of reglobalization, then a third deglobalization. The four phases remained identical in each. While the UK and Europe were the leaders in the first cycle, the US ultimately played the same role in the second and third, with Asia increasingly challenging its dominance.

In 1789, a rebellion in a single country, France, was the major escalation point for deglobalization. The revolutions of 1848, which played a similar role in reglobalization, were spread across not only Europe but also other continents. Such connections would be critical in taking reglobalization and deglobalization to a bigger audience.

Chapter 6: First Reglobalization - Escalation?

The Austrian capital of Vienna and the Polish city of Kraków are two of Europe’s key tourist destinations. Both are living museums, with buildings and music reflecting the region’s prewar zenith. Vienna’s cafes offer elegant desserts like Sachertorte, while Kraków’s bars often feature quirky designs, like the famous Singer with sewing machines on each table.

In 1795, Austria took over Kraków when the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth collapsed. In 1815, it became the Free City of Kraków, an autonomous state controlled by Austria, Russia, and Prussia. The city became a haven of free trade and reglobalization, albeit in a more local sense.

In 1846, Kraków hosted the first in a global series of revolutions that followed the European uprisings of 1830 and 1831. These revolutions escalated reglobalization by bringing together political movements across continents. The core demand of these movements was empowerment for nations and their peoples, often in a Romantic vein.

At the time, the most famous musician from the Austrian Empire was the Hungarian Romantic Franz Liszt. The top Polish musician was another Romantic, Frederic Chopin. Both were revolutionary pianists who supported their national causes and wrote some of their most famous music in their national musical styles.

In their earlier days, their personal lives were equally progressive. One of Chopin’s lovers was the writer George Sand, who dressed in men’s clothing and was strongly rumored to have been bisexual. She and Liszt’s lover, the writer Marie d’Agoult, smoked in public, which was also considered at the time to be a male practice.

Chopin and Liszt were unrepresentative of their time, and the causes they backed did not meet with universal support. Austria crushed Kraków’s uprising in 1846, and Chopin would die of complications from tuberculosis three years later. But the movement that they helped inspire was only just getting started.

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In 1848, populism would fulfil its revolutionary potential. Resistance movements started to spread across the world, overthrowing regimes and even prompting civil wars. Events kicked off in what is now Italy. In January, populist rebels seized Palermo, the capital of Sicily, and thereafter brought almost the entire island under their control.

In an echo of 1789, the next phase began in France. In February 1848, a revolution removed the last French monarch from power. In March 1848, Austria witnessed a series of uprisings in Hungary and other parts of its empire. Further revolts soon ensued within the states of the neighboring German Confederation, including parts of modern-day Poland.

The unrest was far from limited to Europe. In November 1848, radicals staged a revolt in Brazil in what became known as the Beach Rebellion. In Asia, Sri Lanka witnessed an uprising in July 1848. In 1850, China embarked on the Taiping Rebellion, which lasted until 1864 and turned into the bloodiest civil war of the nineteenth century.

Like 1789, 1848 was also followed by international conflicts. But unlike the French Revolutionary Wars, none of these ignited deglobalization or became global in nature. The Crimean War was the most important example.

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In 1853, the Ottoman Empire declared war on Russia, soon supported by Britain, France, and Sardinia. The conflict ultimately expanded to Crimea, which gave the war its name. Russia lost the conflict in 1856 and had to give up some smaller territories in southeastern Europe. Britain and France would continue to expand their influence, especially in Asia.

In the 1850s, Britain won a second war against the Burmese Empire, emerged victorious in a conflict with Persia, and put down a mutiny in India. In 1858, France embarked on its conquest of Vietnam. As a Western power, America also started playing a role. In 1853, its ships blockaded Japan and forced it to open up to international trade.

Overall, the late 1840s and 1850s supported reglobalization by boosting global convergence with western European norms. In Asia, this was a forced convergence, through the assertion of colonial or American power. In Europe, it came through developments like nation-building, or the disappearance of serfdom.

Reglobalization’s dark side also continued to rear its head. In Asia, colonialism was typically accompanied by oppression. And the rise of the German and Italian nations would only occur through revolutions and wars. However, reglobalization carried on escalating and would grow towards a peak in subsequent decades.?

Chapter 7: First Reglobalization - Peak

In central Europe, Austria and Poland have many rivals as tourist destinations. One of them is the German region of Bavaria. Bavaria and its capital Munich are home to some of the most famous symbols of German identity, including Lederhosen, Oktoberfest, opera festivals, and BMW.

However, although German identity today is so distinctive, Germany was not always a single country. In the mid-nineteenth century, it participated in one of three sets of national unifications or reunifications that occurred globally. These events symbolized the unifying spirit of the first era of reglobalization and helped propel it to its peak.

In the early 1860s, the German state of Prussia took initial steps towards creating a united Germany. In 1864, it embarked on the Second Schleswig War, bringing further territories under its umbrella. To the south, Italian states took similar steps towards unification, creating the Kingdom of Italy in 1861.

In 1866, Prussia and Italy fought a war against Austria. The conflict ended with Prussia and Italy gaining territory from Austria, and with Austria permitting Hungary to co-manage its empire. The ungainly construct of Austria-Hungary was born, stretching from western Europe to modern-day Ukraine.

In 1870, Prussia went to war with France and united with other German states to form Germany. The new nation won the war the following year. Also in 1871, Italy achieved its final act of unification, moving its capital to the ancient center of Rome. Although Italy would remain a smaller power than Germany, both countries continued on parallel paths.

In particular, Germany and Italy would soon embark on their next contribution to reglobalization, transforming into colonial powers. As larger nations in the heart of Europe, they also shared several challenges with their neighbor Austria-Hungary. In the coming decades, this central European trio would form an increasingly important alliance.

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In the Americas, the US achieved another major reunification after the US Civil War, which began in 1861 and ended in 1865. In 1861, the north of the country opposed slavery and militated against it through the work of activists like Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth. Several southern states withdrew from the US in protest.

Tubman helped extract slaves from the south and get them to freedom. She was a fierce campaigner for human rights. “There was one of two things I had a right to: liberty or death,” she said. “If I could not have one, I would take the other.” During the war, she was a spy for the north, which later won her a place in the US Army Military Intelligence Corps Hall of Fame.

The north ultimately won the war and forced the south to illegalize slavery. Abolition brought the US more into line with western norms. A reunited America soon became an even more significant international power, purchasing Alaska from Russia in 1867 and taking its borders all the way to Asia.

The US was not alone. In 1861, Russia abolished serfdom, thereby converging with practices in western Europe. The serfs made up a large minority of the Russian population and were confined to indentured servitude working the country’s substantial lands. The abolition of serfdom was the most important reform after the end of the Crimean War.

However, Russia couldn’t completely escape geopolitical tension. In 1863, Polish rebels rose up against the empire’s rule. By 1864, Russia had crushed the revolt, executing rebels and deporting them to Siberia. Serfdom was abolished, driving convergence with western European practices. Nevertheless, it occurred chaotically, leaving many laborers out of work.

In the latter half of the 1870s, eastern Europe suffered renewed upheavals. During the Great Eastern Crisis of 1875 to 1878, the Ottoman Empire got into severe financial difficulties and lost yet another conflict with Russia. Four of its territories in southeastern Europe achieved full or partial independence and would ultimately become sovereign states.

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Finally, in the 1860s, east Asia also witnessed events that would help drive convergence between global norms. In 1861, China had just witnessed eleven years of civil conflict, as well as the Second Opium War between China on the one hand and Britain and France on the other. As a result of the latter, China ceded even more territory to Britain and Russia.

That year, two women effectively took charge of the country – Empress Dowagers Cixi and Ci’an. Three years later, the two women led the imperial government to victory in China’s civil war. They would also oversee the beginning of the Self-Strengthening Movement, an initiative designed to modernize China and keep pace with the West.

Europe’s bumpy convergence between West and East found additional parallels in Asia. In 1867, the fourteen-year-old Emperor Meiji assumed the throne in Japan. The period known as the Meiji Restoration began. The imperial government united the country and put it through a rapid modernization, ultimately leapfrogging China.

Emerging powers like Japan, the US and Germany converged around a more modern model of nationhood. First, the nation had to be united and independent or self-governing, with institutions that enabled that unity and governance. Second, the nation had to be capable of advancing its international interests in an age where the dominant powers were Western, modern, and liberal.

As nations converged around this model globally, reglobalization peaked. Nevertheless, this convergence prompted toxic rivalries and overreach in international policy. The outcomes of the first era of reglobalization would also sow the seeds for its downfall.?

Chapter 8: First Reglobalization - Outcome

During our lifetimes, various figures have become lightning rods for backlash against Europe’s imperial past. One of them has been Cecil Rhodes, who helped Britain control and colonize swathes of southern Africa in the 1880s and 1890s. After the colonial period, he came to symbolize some of the less palatable aspects of reglobalization.

Rhodes brought new territories into Britain’s global colonial network and developed international companies like De Beers, which survives to this day. He also disempowered black citizens through initiatives like the Franchise and Ballot Act and managed colonies like Southern Rhodesia, later known as Rhodesia and Zimbabwe, using oppressive white minority rule.

Although Rhodes and his ilk have since lost influence, the legacy of mismanagement has proved hard to shake off. Zimbabwe overturned white minority rule and adopted its current name in 1980. Yet, it has slipped back into dysfunction. Since the 1990s, the country has veered from one policy controversy to another. Hyperinflation has periodically taken hold.

Nevertheless, the country was and is stunning. It houses Great Zimbabwe, an ancient settlement with an early form of air conditioning. It hosts the world’s largest waterfall, the Victoria Falls, where the spray is so intense that it has spawned a mini rainforest. It has held on to its biodiversity despite threats like poaching. And its people’s resilience is impressive as ever.

In the 1880s and 1890s, as Europe entered a more peaceful period, Zimbabwe was one of many countries in Africa and Asia that attracted colonial settlers. The major outcome of the first era of reglobalization was that Europeans dominated every corner of the earth, often using unpalatable tactics to do so. In later decades, that dissonance would help drive deglobalization’s return.

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In Africa, these developments began after 1878, when the Great Eastern Crisis concluded and Europe entered a more peaceful period. Europe’s international powers looked to other continents for territory, as they did after the Napoleonic Wars ended in 1815. The Great Eastern Crisis weakened the Ottoman Empire, which provided some easy initial prey.

In 1881, France took control of the Ottoman territory of Tunisia. In 1882, Britain did the same in the Ottoman territory of Egypt. At the Berlin Conference of 1884 to 1885, European powers agreed to build on this success and divide the rest of Africa between them. Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, and Spain all ultimately participated in the carve-up.

A more fragmented parallel process evolved in southern Asia and the Pacific. In 1880, the British gained a hold on areas of Pakistan after the Second Anglo-Afghan War, while Afghanistan acted as a buffer between Britain and Russia. In 1885, the British took over the rest of the Burmese Empire, displacing its final king, Thibaw Min, and its last queen, Supayalat.

In the same year, France took over northern and central Vietnam after the Tonkin War. It had already seized control over southern Vietnam and neighboring Cambodia in the 1860s. In 1893, the French established a protectorate in Laos. That year, even America joined in, overthrowing Hawaii’s queen Lili‘uokalani and extending its territory into Oceania.

*****

Until the French Revolutionary Wars, the first era of deglobalization enabled countries like America to break away from traditional European dominance and manage their affairs in a more enlightened, reasoned way. After the Napoleonic Wars, it had helped regions like Greece break away in a similar vein, but in pursuit of a more romanticized national vision.

Before the Crimean War, the first era of reglobalization had enabled nations to unite around this individualistic philosophy and, where relevant, expand their global interests independently. After the Great Eastern Crisis, nations and other groups coordinated their actions through a different approach that was more modern and practical – of which the Berlin Conference was an example.

In the later nineteenth century, various fields expressed this approach in divergent ways. In politics, the new pragmatism was known as Realpolitik. Among activists, Marxism and socialism helped workers advance their own interests together. Feminism aimed to achieve something similar for women.

During this period, technology also made advances that supported globalization. These included the first automobile, the first telephone, the first radio, the first film, and the first modern electric generator. The airplane and the television followed in the early twentieth century.

In the arts, realism helped audiences look at the world more objectively. Modernism helped artists incorporate radical innovations as well as diverse influences into their work. These innovations ranged from using new rhythms and scales through arranging words in different patterns to loosening the rules of representation in painting.

One key diverse influence was Scott Joplin, the black American composer who helped popularize ragtime. Another was Hokusai, the Japanese painter from the earlier nineteenth century. His paintings of Mount Fuji from different perspectives, and his occasionally surreal sketches of everyday Japanese scenes, had an especially deep impact on French art and music.

Sexuality became another important topic for modernists. Cultural icons like Oscar Wilde, and later Virginia Woolf and Georgia O’Keeffe, would represent the LGBTQ+ community in their writings and art as well as becoming a part of it in real life. Some artists outside the community would also integrate it into their work.

Within the first era of reglobalization, these differing versions of modernization caused tensions. There was a clash globally between establishment and activist politics, but also between the beauty that some Europeans and Americans saw in non-Western countries and the ruthlessness with which European and American politicians subjugated them.

Ultimately, the influence of the European and American establishment reached its limit. A second era of deglobalization emerged and would resist globalization in a similar sequence to the first era. As ever, trends associated with globalization would continue during this second era, but they didn’t enjoy nearly the same tailwinds.

Chapter 9: Second Deglobalization - Emergence

America is a microcosm built on globalization. Yet, it has hosted the emergence of all three eras of deglobalization. The US Declaration of Independence kicked off the first. An explosion on an American warship started the second. The 9/11 terrorist attacks initiated the third. ?????????

Of the three events, the second is the least familiar to a global audience. In 1898, an explosion ripped through the USS Maine while the American warship was stationed on the island of Cuba. Most of the crew died. Without conclusive evidence, the US press blamed Cuba’s colonial overlord, Spain. The US declared war on Spain the same year.

On the opposite side of the globe, the Philippines had also remained a Spanish colony. In 1896, however, Filipino revolutionaries led by Emilio Aguinaldo launched their own anti-colonial rebellion. In 1898, the US won its war against Spain and took control of both Cuba and the Philippines, as well as two Spanish territories in their vicinity, Puerto Rico and Guam.

The US granted Cuba its independence in 1902. Despite fierce Filipino resistance, it held onto the Philippines until 1946, and it still controls Puerto Rico and Guam. However, a trend had already begun. Regional powers that had buckled in the face of Western and European empires would start asserting their strength more vigorously.

*****

In 1899, British colonists and their former Dutch peers, known as Boers, came to blows in what is now South Africa. Britain won the conflict, known as the Boer War, and occupied the Boer parts of the region. However, victory took the UK two and a half years and came at a terrible cost.

During the war, British forces used scorched earth tactics, herded more than a hundred thousand Boers and Africans into prison camps, and kept them in horrendous conditions. Tens of thousands died. Emily Hobhouse, a women’s rights campaigner, described the scorched earth and the camps to the UK public. Photos appeared in the press, intensifying the outcry.

“The land seemed dead and silent as far as the eye could reach, absolutely without life, only carcasses of horses, mules, and cattle, with a sort of acute anguish in their look, and bleached bones and refuse of many kinds. I saw a few burnt farms, but those unburnt seemed still and lifeless also, and no work is going on in the fields,” one of her reports read.

“The exile camp here is a good two miles from the town, dumped down on the southern slope of a kopje, right out on to the care brown veld, not a vestige of a tree in any direction, nor shade of any description. It was about four o’clock of a scorching afternoon when I set foot in the camp, and I can’t tell you what I felt like, so I won’t try.”

Following these reports, the British government established a commission to investigate. It was led by Millicent Fawcett, another women’s rights campaigner. After the war, the government disbanded the camps. In 1909, Britain united various territories in the region to form the self-governing Union of South Africa. It was a precursor of colonial decline.

*****

East Asia was another area where global powers’ influence was under threat. In 1895, Japan became the dominant player in the region for the first time after winning the First Sino-Japanese War against China. Japan took over various territories in the region, including Taiwan and later Korea. The power of China, its main rival, declined.

Starting in 1899, a government-supported sect known as the Boxers attacked foreigners and Christians in China.America, Japan, and six European powers put down the rebellion. Meanwhile, Japan continued its ascent. In 1905, it became the first Asian nation to defeat a European power in a modern conflict, beating Russia in the Russo-Japanese War.

Such incidents helped push China to install a more modern regime. In 1911, a revolution overturned more than two millennia of imperial rule and ushered in the Republic of China. Other creaking empires with large Asian territories also witnessed rebellions, albeit unsuccessful ones, specifically Russia in 1905 and the Ottomans in 1908.

At the start of the second era of deglobalization, events in China and Japan have some similarities to the rise of the US at the start of the first. America resisted the domination of the global powers and ultimately put North America at the heart of globalization. Japan and China did the same for Asia.

By the middle of the second era, the US was the world’s largest economy. Now, during the third era, China and Japan are the second and third largest, respectively. In some countries, the return of deglobalization planted the seeds for long-term global financial success. However, as in the case of America, the path to that success has been far from smooth.?

Chapter 10: Second Deglobalization - Escalation

As with every country, some of America’s most volatile relationships have been with nations on its doorstep. In Latin America, those have included Cuba, Mexico, and Venezuela. One of its tighter allies in the region is the Dominican Republic. Over three million Americans visit the country each year, typically to see family or for sun and relaxation.

Nevertheless, relations between the two countries have not always been friendly. In fact, they were one of the more unusual casualties of the second era of deglobalization. During the First World War, the US occupied the Dominican Republic in case Germany tried to use it as a military base. The occupation only ceased six years after the war ended, in 1924.

The war escalated the second era of deglobalization and took it to a variety of new locations. Like the French Revolutionary Wars, it was the first in a set of two global conflicts, but it touched an even bigger range of countries. Its catalyst was unrest in another small nation, located this time in southeast Europe.

Like the Dominican Republic, which borders the divide between the US and Latin America, southeast Europe lies on a geopolitical fault line. Before the First World War, it formed a boundary between no less than three continents – Europe, Asia, and Africa – and three empires – Austria-Hungary, the Ottomans, and Russia – as well as other nations like Italy and Greece.

Towards the end of the first era of reglobalization, these powers cooperated better. However, in the second era of deglobalization, relations deteriorated. After the Young Turk Revolution, the Ottomans gradually lost all their southeast European provinces, while tensions emerged between groups backed by Russia and Austria-Hungary.

In June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, made a trip to one of his territories in the region, Bosnia and Herzegovina. A radical Bosnian Serb activist who resented his regime shot and killed him and his wife Sophie. Like the downfall of Louis and Marie Antoinette, the assassination prompted a broader European reaction.

Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Russia declared war on Austria-Hungary. Russia and its allies – Britain, France, and Belgium – soon found themselves in a conflict with Austria-Hungary and its ally Germany. Once again, southeast Europe was at the epicenter of a geopolitical earthquake. By July, the First World War had begun.

*****

World War One would claim tens of millions of victims – many times more than the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. It ran from 1914 to 1918 and affected an even greater range of regions globally. From 1918 to 1920, a flu pandemic would add to its effects, causing quarantines and tens of millions of further deaths and crimping economic activity.

The conflict pitted established global powers and their colonies against upstart or declining powers from central and eastern Europe. On one side, there were the Allies – Britain, France, Russia, Belgium, Serbia, and later Italy and America. On the other, there were the Central Powers – Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottomans.

Just as the War of the First Coalition helped escalate the French Revolution, the horror of World War One helped spark another revolution in Russia. In 1917, a provisional government replaced the imperial Romanov dynasty. However, a group of radical communists swept it aside within months, executing Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra.

The Bolsheviks would ultimately conduct their own version of the Terror, the wave of retributions that occurred during the French Revolution. They would also have to wage a civil war to establish the Soviet Union out of the ashes of the Russian Empire. Initially, however, they withdrew from World War One and let the conflict between the two sides play out.

*****

The conflict ended with an Allied victory. It also boosted political fragmentation. The outcome bore some similarities to the War of the First Coalition. In both conflicts, France was on the winning side. In 1795, Austria lost the Austrian Netherlands to France, while after 1918 the constituent states of Austria-Hungary became independent.

Poland saw significant changes as a result of both conflicts. In 1795, it ceased to exist, while in 1918 it regained its independence. After World War One, the Ottoman Empire also disbanded, and Germany gave up its colonies in Africa and the Pacific. The Russian Empire transformed into the Soviet Union.

After the war, the British Empire peaked, controlling almost a quarter of the world’s land. However, cracks soon appeared. In 1919, Afghanistan won its independence, while Egypt staged a revolution against British rule. Other established powers also experienced upheaval in the Middle East. In Iran, the Pahlavis replaced the Qajars as the ruling dynasty after a coup in 1921.

Partly as a result of this volatility and fragmentation, both eras witnessed the emergence of dictatorships and other symptoms of aggression. Napoleon seized power in France during the War of the Second Coalition, when France was fighting in Europe and the Middle East. In the years after the First World War, central Europe experienced an analogous set of circumstances.

After the end of the war, Italy faced a number of tensions over territories that it claimed or occupied. In Europe, this included the city of Fiume, also known as Rijeka, which Italy ultimately partitioned with its neighbor Croatia. Beyond Europe, the most important example was Libya in the Middle East, which lapsed into civil war in 1920.

In 1922, Italy’s National Fascist Party staged a march on Rome, which effectively turned into a coup. The Fascists escalated the war in Libya and ultimately colonized the country more formally. Unlike Napoleon, their campaign in North Africa achieved more lasting if undesirable results.

Nevertheless, central European dictatorships would only escalate deglobalization and make it more damaging. As in the Napoleonic era, the world would largely divide into countries who supported or couldn’t resist those dictators, and nations who put up a fight. This division cost tens of millions more lives and took deglobalization to an unrivaled level of intensity.?

Chapter 11: Second Deglobalization - Peak

Amid these divisions, a limited number of regions remained neutral. One example was Turkey and its largest city, Istanbul. Situated on the boundary between Asia and Europe, this multicultural metropolis led empires spanning three continents and almost two millennia. For over five centuries, its Grand Bazaar has been an icon of trade.

Since its independence in 1924, Turkey has straddled many other divides. It is a member of NATO but tries to have a constructive relationship with Russia. It is a mostly Muslim country, but with a secular political framework. However, various historical events have showed the limitations of that approach. Perhaps the most prominent was World War Two.

Turkey tried to remain neutral during the conflict. But in the face of Nazis and Fascists, neutrality grew unappealing. After around five and a half years of fighting, Turkey would finally join the Allied side. The conflict ultimately sucked in every habitable region globally.

The lead-up to the war began in 1929. America’s stock market crashed, ushering in the Great Depression. From an economic perspective, the slump in international activity took deglobalization to unprecedented levels. From a geopolitical perspective, some of the emerging international powers started adopting a much more aggressive stance.

In 1931, Japan annexed part of Manchuria, now the far northeast region of China. In 1933, the Nazis came to power in Germany. Japan was attempting to expand its territory westwards, just as America did before the Napoleonic Wars. Like Napoleon, the Nazis ultimately established a militant dictatorship in the heart of Europe, albeit one that was far more malign.

*****

Prior to World War Two, certain flashpoints between the Nazis and the Allies were similar to those between Napoleon and his opponents. In 1936, the Nazis sent thousands of troops into the area around the river Rhine, which helped demarcate Germany’s border with France. Although this defied Franco-German agreements, France chose not to put up a fight.

The incident partially echoed the outcome of the War of the Third Coalition in 1806, when Napoleon took over the group of German states known as the Confederation of the Rhine. The major difference was that Napoleon waged a much broader conflict and took over territory, rather than purely defying treaties on his own turf.

Nevertheless, the move helped embolden the Nazis. In 1936, a civil war broke out in Spain between leftwing Republicans and rightwing Nationalists. The Nazis and Italy’s Fascists supported the Nationalists, who won the war three years later. There were some similarities to Napoleon’s war against Portugal and Spain, which began in 1807.

In 1938, the Nazis annexed Austria, as well as the Sudetenland, which formed part of Czechoslovakia in eastern Europe. Again, there were similarities to 1807, when Napoleon annexed part of eastern Europe after the War of the Fourth Coalition, although the latter conflict was also much broader.

In 1939, the Nazis invaded Poland and precipitated World War Two. Initially they were allied with the Soviet Union and Italy, just as Napoleon partnered with Russia in 1809 during the War of the Fifth Coalition. The Nazis’ main opponents were France, which they occupied with ease, and Britain, which successfully resisted German bombardments.

When he took office in 1940, British prime minister Winston Churchill was under no illusions about what it would take to defeat Germany. “We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind,” he told the UK’s House of Commons. “We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering.

“You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land, and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory.”

*****

The year 1941 marked a turning point, as 1812 did in the Napoleonic Wars. America entered both sets of conflicts, albeit in different circumstances and on different sides. Japan joined the Second World War as an ally of Germany and Italy. And the Nazis and Napoleon embarked on their failed invasions of Russia, which would ultimately fuel their downfall.

In 1945, the Allies defeated the Axis Powers and declared victory. Since the Nazis were far more malign than Napoleon, the outcomes were especially tragic. Napoleon was a dictator, but he often reformed, rather than wrecked, the institutions of the countries he conquered. The Nazi concentration camps had no parallel in Napoleonic Europe.

On the Allied side, the Soviet Union was also a far more repressive and divisive regime than the Russia that helped win the Napoleonic Wars. During the war, that regime occupied much of eastern Europe. Although the Soviet Union and the other Allies had been on the same side for four years, they were too ideologically opposed to be long-term partners.

The war also limited the reach of the world’s global powers. In particular, Japan temporarily occupied American, British, Dutch, and French colonies, as well as the Portuguese territory of East Timor. Although Japan restored these to their overlords after the war, the occupations helped loosen their grip.

Finally, America’s status changed irrevocably. Its global leadership in the war confirmed it as a superpower alongside the Soviet Union. It had also invented nuclear bombs and used them for the first time in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ultimately resulting in hundreds of thousands of casualties. These weapons of mass destruction took its power to a new level.?

Chapter 12: Second Deglobalization - Outcome

There were two major outcomes from the second era of deglobalization – de-imperialization and the Cold War. De-imperialization covered the collapse of various empires around the world. That led to a weakening of ties between regions which had once come under the same imperial umbrella. The Cold War then exacerbated those tensions.

After World War Two, the remaining European empires, and Japan’s, fell apart. In some respects, the process was similar to the decolonization of Latin America following the Napoleonic Wars. Over a number of decades, Belgium, Britain, France, the Netherlands, and Portugal all lost their major territories outside Europe, especially in Asia and Africa.

As in the first half of the nineteenth century, some colonial entities also divided into a long list of states. French West Africa split up into the countries now known as Benin, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Senegal. French Equatorial Africa ultimately became Chad, the Central African Republic, Gabon, and the Republic of the Congo.

As the traditional imperial order fell away, two systems competed for global power: American capitalism and Soviet communism. The competition replaced the rivalry between the Allies and the Axis Powers and supplanted World War Two with the Cold War. Although the Cold War was more peaceful than World War Two, that was never a foregone conclusion.

During the Cold War, America and Russia were at loggerheads globally. These tensions carried an added threat due to nuclear weapons, which were capable of ending humanity’s existence. Interactions between the two systems were hostile or highly limited. It would take a while for this new world order to reach any kind of an equilibrium.

*****

After they defeated the Nazis, the West and Russia split Germany into western and eastern halves and divided the rest of Europe along similar lines. Crudely speaking, West Germany was capitalist, as were countries above it, below it, or to the west of it. East Germany was communist, as were most countries above it, below it, or to the east of it.

Travel and trade between capitalist and communist countries were strictly controlled. In capitalist countries, companies and individuals could typically communicate and do business more freely with one another. In communist countries, the government played a bigger role and imposed greater restrictions on private activities.

Initially, the most volatile fault line was southeastern Europe and specifically Greece, as it was after the Napoleonic Wars. In 1946, tensions erupted between the Greek government and the Communist Party of Greece and its combat arm. The US and the UK backed the government, while the Communist Party supported the USSR. The tensions soon triggered a civil war.

The Communist Party also received help from Greece’s communist neighbors like Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia had sprung up after World War One to house various southeast European states after the fall of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires. The US and the UK looked to Greece to help counteract their influence.

The Communist Party renounced Greece’s 1946 election results and set up its own provisional government in 1947. However, the USSR had agreed with the US and the UK that Greece would stay within their sphere of influence. Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union ceased to be close allies in 1948, and the Communist Party lost the war the following year.

In 1949, the rivalry between capitalists and communists also went nuclear. The Soviet Union tested an atomic bomb successfully, demonstrating it had the same capabilities that America unleashed during the Second World War. Soon, both sides amassed enough nuclear weapons to prove they could annihilate each other in the event of a global conflict between them.

Finally, that same year, China overthrew its postwar government and joined the communist side. What remained of the old government fled to, and kept hold of, Taiwan. The following year, China and the USSR would embark on a war with the US over Korea, which had been divided into the communist North and the Western-leaning South.

*****

After World War Two, postcolonialism and postmodernism often went hand in hand. For countries that wished to decolonize, it was more important to manage their own affairs than to be a member of an empire run by an ultra-modern power. Across all countries, popular culture also became a key reaction against modernization and a culture run by hyper-educated elites.

Postmodernism started during World War One, when modern military technology helped cost the world millions of lives. It questioned whether rationality and objectivity could form the sole basis of human thinking, and it was theoretically more open to diverse and personal perspectives.

Popular culture also played a critical role. It was more emotional than postmodernism, although artists like Andy Warhol crossed over between the two. That said, as Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera would show, modernism could also be personal and popular. As Kahlo once said: “They thought I was a surrealist, but I wasn’t. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.”

Popular culture and postmodernism questioned modernization in the same way that Romanticism questioned the Enlightenment after the French Revolution. Both populism and Romanticism valued popular interests over pure reason, on which the Enlightenment and modernism had placed a premium.

At first blush, Romanticism and postmodernity might appear to have encouraged divergence. Both movements emphasized the value of individual opinions in addition to objective, scientific truth. Yet, they also enabled individuals to respect their differences. In the mid-twentieth century, this helped pave the way for reglobalization to return.?

Chapter 13: Second Reglobalization - Emergence

After World War Two, many nations immediately sought to make a new start. The birth of the United Nations in 1947 was an attempt to create a durable, monumental institution that would help build a global consensus. Yet, with the Cold War and postcolonial tensions just beginning, the full benefits of the UN would not kick in for decades.

When reglobalization was reborn in the 1950s, Egypt hosted one of its major early triumphs. At the time, the world order remained highly divided between West and East, capitalism and communism, colonialism and postcolonialism. Simply preventing conflict would count as significant progress.

Since World War Two, Egypt had involved itself in yet another postwar division – controversy over the creation of Israel. When Israel became independent from Britain in 1948, Jews and Arabs fought a war over Palestine. The Arab side included Egypt and other nearby states. Although the state of Israel won the war, hostilities raged on.

After the war, some Arab countries witnessed uprisings in which anti-Western politicians seized power – first in Egypt in 1954, then in Syria, Iraq, and Libya in the 1960s. In 1956, the new Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser expropriated the country’s Suez Canal from its owners, who were largely British and French.

In response, Britain, France, and Israel invaded Egypt and blocked the canal. The USSR and the US were horrified. While the USSR supported Egypt, the US backed Israel. However, the US also favored decolonization and opposed colonial powers intervening in ex-colonies. America and the Soviet Union applied massive pressure on the invaders and forced them to pull out.

*****

Later events showed that this was not a one-off. In 1959, communist insurgents took control of Cuba, which was situated roughly a hundred miles from US territory. In 1961, the US tried and failed to overthrow the communists through the so-called Bay of Pigs invasion. In 1962, the Soviet Union agreed to install nuclear missiles in Cuba to bolster its defenses.

Fortunately, both the US and the USSR avoided the temptation to escalate. The USSR agreed to remove nuclear weapons from Cuba, while the US agreed not to invade Cuba. The US also withdrew its nuclear weapons from Turkey, which bordered the USSR. In the 1950s and early 1960s, both Cuba and Korea had now become flashpoints, as they were in the 1890s.

Nevertheless, de-escalation was not yet a perfect science. Starting in 1964, the US became increasingly involved in the war between South Vietnam and communist North Vietnam, which bordered China. The US conscripted troops to fight in the war, which was unpopular domestically. Ultimately, North Vietnam took over the South and forced US troops to leave.

Following the Second World War, western Europe took more unambiguous steps than the US towards international unity. In 1953, six western European states formed a common market for steel, iron, scrap, and coal. This was a steppingstone towards the European Economic Community, or EEC, and the European Atomic Energy Community.

The six states – including France, Italy, and West Germany – founded these communities in 1957 to increase coordination over economic, industrial, and political activity. The concept resembled the customs union which German states introduced in 1833. However, as with the UN, every nation was able to retain its own sovereignty.

*****

Culturally, postcolonialism gathered pace during this period. The Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe published Things Fall Apart, one of the earliest postcolonial novels. VS Naipaul, the British novelist born in Trinidad, published A House for Mr. Biswas. In Latin America, magic realism captured the fantastic local worlds that had emerged from European occupation.

In the developing world, female writers like Clarice Lispector in Brazil, or Nadine Gordimer in South Africa, would gather increasing attention. Elsewhere, diverse voices were also winning more widespread acclaim. One key example in the US was Martin Luther King, whose most direct parallel was Frederick Douglass in the mid-nineteenth century.

These periods also saw an explosion in popular culture. In the early to mid-nineteenth century, when the last such explosion occurred, the most all-embracing cultural experience was opera, incorporating lyrics, music, acting, and artistic design in the scenery. In the later 1950s and 1960s, it was cinema.

In both eras, fans grew increasingly hysterical at musical events. These ranged from Romantic piano recitals in the early nineteenth century to rock and pop concerts in the Fifties and Sixties. The emphasis on personal emotional experience had entered an even more potent phase. It also helped unite popular movements as the second era of reglobalization progressed.?

Chapter 14: Second Reglobalization - Escalation

One of the biggest winners from the second era of reglobalization was Japan. The country had been the world’s second largest economy since 1968, having recovered rapidly since World War Two. Although it ceded second place to China in 2010, Japan has remained a hub for global capital and industry and a leader in technologies like robotics.

In 1968, students and others in the country also participated in a worldwide series of protests. A generation that grew up in the conservative postwar age was now uniting globally and making political demands, driven partly by a more international popular culture. The protests escalated reglobalization in a similar way to the uprisings of 1848.

Like in the 1840s, the events of 1968 began in central Europe – this time, in Czechoslovakia and Poland. Reformers moved to soften Czechoslovakia’s communist policies in what became known as the Prague Spring. This occurred against the backdrop of US protests over Vietnam, which would escalate after the assassination of Martin Luther King.

In both cycles, the next phase began in France. In February 1848, a revolution removed the French monarchy from power. In May 1968, a mass strike shut down France and caused the president to leave the country temporarily. News of both events traveled throughout the globe and would help inspire other major acts of resistance that year.

In 1968, the Soviet Union got involved. Following demonstrations in Yugoslavia in June, the Soviet Union and its allies invaded Czechoslovakia in August and put an end to the Prague Spring. Elsewhere in Europe, republicans rose up against British rule in Northern Ireland the following year, kickstarting the so-called Troubles in the region.

The unrest soon moved on from the West and Europe. In June 1968, protestors organized the March of the One Hundred Thousand in Rio de Janeiro against Brazil’s authoritarian government. In July, the so-called Mexican Movement of 1968 demonstrated against the ruling PRI party. In Africa and Asia, countries like Egypt and Pakistan also witnessed protests.

*****

Starting in 1848 and 1968, the unrest that gripped the world illustrated cracks in the geopolitical order. Authoritarian leaders could no longer impose their will on their peoples to the same extent. However, like in nineteenth-century Germany and Italy, this bid for popular identity would also become a play for convergence.

After 1968, more western European nations would enter into a closer economic and political alliance as part of the European Economic Community or EEC. In the mid-1970s, Spain and Portugal would dispense with their dictatorships. Even the UK, which was more distanced from the rest of the continent, ended up approving EEC membership in a referendum.

Like the 1848 uprisings, the 1968 protests were also followed by intense regional conflicts. Starting in 1968, protestors staged demonstrations and strikes in Pakistan, which at the time consisted of modern-day Pakistan but also Bangladesh. In 1971, Bangladesh launched a liberation war and won its independence. The war led to hundreds of thousands of deaths.

In 1973, the Muslim world embarked on another military encounter. Egypt and its Arab partners, supported by the USSR, attacked Israel, an American ally, during the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur. Israel won the war, but Arab states imposed an energy embargo that caused a severe economic downturn. Despite this, both sides agreed a permanent truce six years later.

Finally, just as colonial India suffered upheavals during the 1850s, postcolonial India experienced tensions during the 1970s. Between 1975 and 1977, its prime minister Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency. And just as imperial China had to endure the Taiping Rebellion, postimperial China experienced the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and early 1970s.

*****

After the upheavals of 1848 and 1968, populism became more rampant globally. Enlightenment and modernist thought lost their clout. In each case, rationalism had to transform into a new movement. After 1848, the Enlightenment reinvented itself and turned into realism and modernism. After 1968, modernism came back in an ecological guise – sustainability.

One scientific concern that modernists had overlooked was the environment. Under modernism, industrial progress often incurred significant environmental side-effects. The 1970s witnessed the rise of the sustainability movement. This incorporated environmental thinking alongside progressive attitudes inherited from modernism.

The first Earth Day in 1970 was followed in 1972 by A Blueprint for Survival, a text which reimagined social issues in the light of ecological concerns. In 1987, the UN published a report, chaired by the European politician Gro Brundtland, which laid out the intersection of environmental and social issues and actions that would be needed to address them.

“Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs,” the report said. “Thus, the goals of economic and social development must be defined in terms of sustainability in all countries.”

Sustainability also found echoes in the arts. Street artists painted and drew direct on the built environment in ways that were often illegal but also highlighted real social concerns. Rap artists used a mode of expression that was closer to real speech to depict those concerns less sentimentally than pop.

Critically, sustainability did not detract from reglobalization. Mechanisms like the UN supported attaining global consensus on sustainability as well as even more populist postwar concerns. With reglobalization now steadily escalating, the period between the late 1970s and early 1990s would take it to its zenith.?

Chapter 15: Second Reglobalization - Peak

In 1986, the US and the USSR met in Iceland’s capital Reykjavik to discuss a range of topics, notably nuclear weapons. The talks were a breakthrough that helped lead to a thaw in the Cold War. It was somehow fitting that such a remote country, with its alien-looking lava fields and blue springs, helped the rest of the world find neutral ground.

To understand this cooperation fully, we have to go back to 1979. In that year, trouble exploded among the Soviet Union’s neighbors in central Asia. The USSR invaded Afghanistan. Islamists staged an uprising and took control of Iran. As a result, oil prices rocketed and would help trigger an international recession.

In eastern Europe, issues were also brewing. In 1980, Poland’s communist government permitted the formation of a trade union known as Solidarity. However, it soon burgeoned into a movement against Soviet control. In 1985, the USSR was forced to reform communism in the region through initiatives like perestroika and glasnost.

At the same time, authoritarian regimes on both sides of the spectrum opened up to modernization. Communist China embarked on a program of industrialization and economic development. Rhodesia ditched white minority rule and changed its name to Zimbabwe. As it had done in the 1860s, reglobalization was driving a global convergence.

*****

In 1989, radical action finally arrived. Protestors tore down the Berlin Wall between capitalist West Berlin and communist East Berlin. The following year, capitalist West Germany and communist East Germany reunited into one capitalist country, with a united Berlin as its capital. It was the second unification of Germany, echoing the first in 1871.

The country became a central plank of the EEC, which converted into the EU in 1992. The EU created a closer union between its members and introduced a framework that would enable closer economic ties and greater freedom of movement as well as a common European currency.

After the Berlin Wall fell, events snowballed. The Warsaw Pact collapsed. In 1991, the USSR followed. Like various southeast European states during the Great Eastern Crisis, communist Yugoslavia fell apart, and its constituent states became self-governing. In the Cold War, the West could finally claim victory. ?

Other developing nations also inched closer to western norms. In 1986, communist Vietnam began to reform its economy. That year, Corazon Aquino took over control of the Philippines from a longstanding dictatorial regime. She established a new constitution, introducing checks on presidential power along with respect for human rights.

The move towards democracy in Asia was not universal but became increasingly palpable. As Aquino herself told the US Congress in 1986, perhaps idealistically: “Today we face the aspiration of a people who have known so much poverty and massive unemployment for the past fourteen years. And yet offer their lives for the abstraction of democracy.

“Wherever I went in the campaign, slum area or impoverished village, they came to me with one cry: Democracy. Not food, although they clearly needed it, but democracy. Not work, although they surely wanted it, but democracy. Not money, for they gave what little they had to my campaign.”

*****

These events in southeast Asia came to set a trend. In 1987, South Korea also revised its constitution and ushered in a new regime the following year, after the first direct presidential election in over a decade. The country softened authoritarian policies and expanded dialogue with North Korea. In 1991, both nations joined the UN and set out plans for disarmament.

In south Asia, India introduced its New Economic Policy, which liberalized and privatized swathes of its economy. Other countries moved women more actively into leadership roles. In 1988, Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto became the first democratically elected female leader of a Muslim country. In 1991, Bangladesh installed its first female prime minister, Khaleda Zia.

In South Africa, Nelson Mandela was released from jail and abolished apartheid. Later, his third wife Gra?a Machel also emerged as a key advocate for sustainable development in emerging markets. In addition to her other accomplishments, Machel is the only person in modern times to have been First Lady of two different countries, South Africa and Mozambique.

“Madiba was able to extend his humanity to recognize the humanity of others,” Machel said later, calling Mandela by a common nickname. “We all need to go through that journey where we move from being tribal or racial… otherwise we will not realize the capacity to recognize and value others.”

Since 1991, the second era of reglobalization never matched its peak achievement – the end of the Cold War. However, in the lead-up to that moment, it brought many nations together around a more modern model of leadership. Moreover, even after the Cold War concluded, it would notch up significant achievements that are still with us in some form today.?

Chapter 16: Second Reglobalization - Outcome

For over four decades, the Czech capital Prague was a communist city. Now it is an eastern European equivalent of Vienna, a living museum with stately architecture and a rich modern history. Its absinthe bars – which even serve absinthe ice cream – were a reminder of its cultural heyday in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Prague, and eastern Europe in general, could not have been further from the urban clamor and wild landscapes of Africa. But the closer one looks at eastern Europe’s recent history, the better one understands the similarities as well as the differences with the conclusion of the first era of reglobalization in the late nineteenth century.

After 1878, European nations accumulated power by acquiring new colonies globally. After 1991, European nations accumulated power by bonding together as collectives – the EU on the one hand, and Russia and its allies on the other. As part of this, the EU and Russia scrambled for support among post-communist nations in eastern Europe.

Prague was a natural EU member. The Czech Republic had no Russian borders and already neighbored West Germany. Historically, it had formed part of the Austrian Empire. However, unlike some other eastern European states, it never joined the EU’s common currency, the euro. Four other European nations have remained in the same category alongside it.

In the 1990s, the former Yugoslavia experienced a series of brutal conflicts that helped give it a more mixed relationship with both the EU and Russia. Two of its former republics, Croatia and Slovenia, would join the EU and the euro, alongside four other former communist countries to the north. The other former Yugoslav republics did not.

Ukraine and Moldova were geographically closer to Russia and historically more open to Russian influence. However, Russia’s invasions of Ukraine have since destroyed those relationships. By contrast, to its north, Belarus remains Russia’s staunchest ally.

Since the 1990s, the EU and Russia have competed directly in navigating this patchwork of relationships in eastern Europe, much as European powers turned into rivals towards the end of the first era of reglobalization. As it did during the first half of the twentieth century, this competition has since exploded into outright hostility.

*****

In Asia, China’s role grew even faster than Russia’s in Europe. It took over Hong Kong from the UK in 1997 and entered the World Trade Organization in 2001. Its economy expanded rapidly. Nevertheless, even China got caught up in the financial crises of the mid to late 1990s, which were a temporary headwind for reglobalization in Asia and emerging markets.

China’s success originated in a program of reform that its leader Deng Xiaoping had begun in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1985, he gave a speech outlining its intended trajectory. “The reform has stimulated the development of the productive forces and has resulted in a series of profound changes in economic life, social life, people’s work style and their mentality,” he said.

?“In the reform we have consistently followed two fundamental principles. One is the predominance of the socialist public sector of the economy; the other is common prosperity. The utilization of foreign investment capital in a planned way and the promotion of a degree of individual economy are both serving the development of the socialist economy as a whole.

“The all-round reform of our economic structure has just begun. The general orientation and principles are already established, but we still have to work out specific rules and regulations by trial and error. While trying to identify and tackle problems early, we must seize the opportunity of the moment and vigorously explore new possibilities.”

*****

Beyond Asia, South Africa became the last country to abolish the era of segregation and white minority rule. Although Africa had been shaking off colonialism for decades, the country only completed its abolition of apartheid in 1994. This was reminiscent of Brazil, which became the last country in South America to abolish slavery as late as 1888.

However, history also repeated itself in a more depressing fashion. In the late nineteenth century, the scramble for Africa had inflicted terrible suffering on the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Now, in the 1990s and 2000s, the DRC and its neighbor Rwanda had to contend with horrifying civil wars that cost millions of lives.

Meanwhile, in a jarring contrast, the US and Europe flourished, just as the UK and France had done in the late nineteenth century. In particular, the US invented new technologies like the mobile phone and the internet that boosted global communications.

By extension, this analogy with the late nineteenth century gave 1990s Russia a few similarities with Germany and Italy after the 1870s. Russia was a new rival to the Atlantic powers, albeit born from the collapse of the Soviet Union rather than unification. Although it was struggling to hold onto its prior power, it had enough to ensure it remained a force in global affairs.

Ultimately, the outcome from the second era of reglobalization was similar to the outcome from the first. On the one hand, it yielded a more connected capitalist world order in which western Europe and America were the winners. On the other hand, it prompted change and upheaval in emerging markets. As both eras faded, globalization would encounter resistance.?

Chapter 17: Third Deglobalization - Emergence

On New Year’s Eve, 1999, every head of state was preparing to usher their nation into the new millennium. Countries vied to put on the most spectacular show. Leaders lined up to give inspiring speeches. The millennium was an arbitrary date – nothing much would actually be different on January 1. Yet, it was the embodiment of a once-in-a-thousand-year opportunity.

The president of Earth’s largest nation took a different approach. His country was only eight years old, and he had led it out of an even bigger state that collapsed under its own weight. However, his tenure had marred itself with violence, economic hardship, and his personal struggles with drink. It had reinforced the perception of a one-time superpower in decline.

On New Year’s Eve, the president gave a televised address to the nation. In the background stood a simple Christmas tree between stately white columns. His delivery was languid, but he got to the point quickly. He would mark the new era by announcing his retirement.

The outgoing president, Boris Yeltsin, was one of the few people who could have upstaged the millennium. Yeltsin grew up in rural Russia. He subsequently climbed the ranks in the Soviet construction industry and then Soviet politics. In July 1991, he became Russia’s leader. Later that year, he presided over the Soviet Union’s dissolution.

For Russia the transition proved ugly. Industrial activity collapsed. The government sold off enterprises in chaotic auctions. In 1998 the country defaulted. During the 1990s, it became mired in conflicts with its breakaway region of Chechnya. It also lost influence over other former Soviet territories, which it had mostly dominated since before the Soviet Union even existed.

Yeltsin’s successor was his prime minister Vladimir Putin. Putin was a former Soviet agent who had come to prominence through the conflict in Chechnya. As Russia entered the new millennium, the question was whether Putin could help recapture the country’s former clout or merely manage its inevitable decline.

*****

When Tsar Nicholas II took power in 1894, an astute observer might have asked something similar. The Russian famine of 1891 and 1892 had highlighted the country’s backwardness. In central and eastern Europe, the country was increasingly taking a back seat to Germany. Beyond Europe, its empire was stagnating compared with the US and Japan.

Both Putin’s and Nicholas’s reigns opened with a disaster. In 1896, a crowd gathered at Khodynka Field in Moscow to celebrate Nicholas’s coronation. Hundreds of people died in the crush. In 2000, a Russian submarine sank during a training exercise after a number of explosions on board. The entire crew perished.

Amid those disasters, deglobalization re-emerged, albeit in different forms. After the Spanish-American War, frictions built slowly between Western and European powers on the one hand and regions that they had dominated on the other. After 9/11, tensions skyrocketed between the West and the Middle East.

Deglobalization soon had Russia in its sights. In 1905, Japan, then a regional power, challenged Russia’s global clout in East Asia by winning the Russo-Japanese War. That same year, workers marched on one of Nicholas II’s palaces in protest. Soldiers fired on them, causing hundreds of casualties. The incident prompted strikes, mutinies, and uprisings across the country.

In 2003, Russia embarked on a process with a few resemblances to that incident. In November, the Rose Revolution in Georgia loosened Russia’s hold over the ex-Soviet republic. The following year, Western-backed politicians who opposed Russia assumed control of Ukraine in the Orange Revolution. Russia’s relationship with the West cooled significantly.

*****

Nicholas II quelled the 1905 revolution by creating a democratic imperial parliament known as the Duma and introducing a constitution with more robust civil rights. But his reign never entirely recovered.

Putin had no intention of following the same path to powerlessness. During the 2000s, the boom in natural resources allowed Russia to build a financial war-chest and to drag its economy out of the chaos of the 1990s. The recovery made Putin even more popular and helped him undermine his detractors.

In 2008, deglobalization became a major force in the world economy. The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers led to a slump in international economic activity, despite significant collaborations between governments to help resolve it. However, despite plummeting natural resource prices, Russia remained resilient and even staged a successful invasion of Georgia that year.

Putin used his power to forge a path that was more hostile to the West. Others, albeit less successfully, adopted a similar approach. In 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to power in Iran and pursued anti-Western policies. In January 2010, a pro-Russian politician beat Yulia Tymoshenko, a more Western-friendly candidate, in the Ukrainian presidential elections.

There was also a counter-resistance. In 2008, Barack Obama won the US presidency, promising to de-escalate the War on Terror, stabilize the economy, and improve overseas engagement. However, he still faced opposition from Americans who didn’t favor conforming to international norms, on matters ranging from health and financial policy to gun control.

“The current path of globalization demands a course correction,” Obama would say in a speech towards the end of his tenure. “In the years and decades ahead, our countries have to make sure that the benefits of an integrated global economy are more broadly shared by more people.” No-one realized the extent to which that course correction and deglobalization would coincide.?

Chapter 18: Third Deglobalization - Escalation

In the wake of the global financial crisis, governments borrowed massively to support their economies. Nations that used the euro as their currency were no exception. In April 2010, it became clear that one of them, Greece, would require a giant bailout. Other countries on the periphery of the eurozone were also facing financial stress.

During the crisis, eurozone unity reached breaking point. Stronger countries and institutions required unpalatable concessions to help weaker ones. Nor was the eurozone alone in its struggles. The bastion of the global financial system, the US, almost defaulted in 2011 amid political disagreements over economic policy.

Like the financial impasse in 1789 and the French Revolution that followed, the crisis cost a number of European leaders their jobs. In a different way to the events of the 1910s, the escalation tore Europe apart. At the same time, the Arab Spring also broadened the political turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa beyond Afghanistan and Iraq.

Unlike France’s financial troubles and the French Revolutionary Wars, the Arab Spring had no direct relationship to the eurozone crisis. It began across the Mediterranean Sea in North Africa in 2010, then spread to the Middle East. However, the economic headwinds that followed the global financial crisis also helped trigger revolutions and conflicts in the region.

*****

The unrest started in Tunisia. A policewoman confiscated produce from a street seller who subsequently set himself on fire. After a series of protests, the president left the country and a new government was installed. Elsewhere in North Africa, Egypt and Libya also overthrew their presidents, while Libya embarked on a series of civil wars that left tens of thousands dead.

In the Middle East, dissidents like Nobel laureate Tawakkol Karman forced through regime change in Yemen. However, the country plunged into a civil war, which cost hundreds of thousands of lives through conflict and famine. The conflicts helped fuel deglobalization in the Middle East as foreign businesses reduced their activities and investments in the region.

Syria’s civil war, which began in 2011, not only killed hundreds of thousands more people. It also helped unleash the creation of the Islamic State, a terrorist caliphate spanning Syria and Iraq. The Islamic State committed terrorist attacks in Europe, America, and beyond, and sparked a new round in the war on terrorism.

In 2015, the Syrian conflict also prompted the worst refugee crisis in Europe since the World Wars. Deglobalization reached new heights in Europe as countries closed their borders. The EU saw a backlash against the free migration that helped underpin it. The instabilities in the EU finally merged with those in the Middle East and North Africa.

In the Middle East, many protestors wanted to bring the region in line with global norms. As Karman put it: “Our contemporary world, which has been refined and developed by expertise and long experience, good and bad, is marching with confident steps towards the creation of a new world and shining globalization.” Yet, the Arab Spring did not bring that new world closer.

The upheavals of 2010 and beyond would face even more challenges than the protests of 1968 in translating their activities into positive change. The Arab Spring was the most glaring example. However, as Ukraine found out in 2014, it was not the only uprising that would provoke military conflict.

*****

In 1917, the Russian Revolution served as a critical event in the later stages of World War One. In its aftermath, the Russian Civil War also played a notable role. Similarly, in the wake of the Arab Spring, a former Soviet republic experienced its own revolution, prompting a concerted intervention from Russia.

In 2014, Ukraine overthrew its pro-Russian president in an uprising. In response, Russia invaded and occupied the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, which housed a Russian naval base. Russia later helped destabilize the Donbas region in the east of the country and brought it under its supporters’ control.

Russia’s reaction prompted Western sanctions on Russia and military assistance for Ukraine. Instead of backing down, Russia upped its hostility to the West. In 2015, it joined the Syrian civil war on the opposite side to the US and western Europe. It never withdrew from Crimea and it made its presence felt in eastern Ukraine.

Combined with the Arab Spring and the eurozone crisis, events in Ukraine helped escalate deglobalization. They also coincided with a time when investors were fleeing emerging markets. Those hardest-hit included Argentina, during Cristina Kirchner’s tenure, Brazil, during Dilma Rousseff’s, and Turkey, during the latter part of Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s leadership.

Like Germany during World War One, Russia had become the archenemy of the US and the Atlantic powers. Domestically, however, Putin’s approval rating was sky-high after the occupation of Crimea. As deglobalization moved towards its peak, he would become one of the biggest thorns in the West’s side.?

Chapter 19: Third Deglobalization - Peak

In the spring of 2016, it looked like the world might yet temper deglobalization. In the US, Democrats who were more in favor of globalization appeared poised to win that year’s presidential election. In Europe, Greece and the eurozone had reached an agreement the previous year that deterred Greece from leaving the single currency.

In the developing world, China and other countries were recovering from a period of economic instability over the prior three years. In the Middle East, the Syrian refugee crisis seemed to have peaked, while Iraq was making progress in recapturing territory from the Islamic State. And a peace treaty that Russia and Ukraine signed in 2015 was fragile but still in force.

Finally, in 2015, the member states of the United Nations had agreed a global set of Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs. The goals committed countries to working together on ambitious sustainability targets, with an ultimate deadline of 2030. The targets themselves spanned a comprehensive range of environmental, social, and governance issues.

Starting in the summer of 2016, much of that changed. The crises in the EU, including over migration, would finally help prompt the departure of one of its biggest members, the UK. The Democrats lost the US presidential election, making way for an administration that was less supportive of globalization.

After the election, the US attacked its own trading arrangements with the EU and Mexico and launched a dispute with its NATO allies over defense spending. It also conducted an economic war with China – for instance, introducing tariffs in an attempt to curb Chinese imports. Deglobalization had returned in force.

*****

In 2019, tensions between China and the West would rise further. Protests in Hong Kong met with a crackdown by its pro-Chinese chief executive Carrie Lam. China would later impose a national security law in the territory, prompting some investors to leave for Singapore and elsewhere.

The rise of deglobalization in eastern Asia was accompanied by high but stabilizing tensions in the Middle East. By the end of 2017, the Islamic State had lost almost all its territory in Syria and Iraq. In the early 2020s, Syria and Yemen agreed a series of ceasefires in their civil wars, temporarily supporting geopolitical stability in the region.

Asia’s epicenter of deglobalization shifted from west to east, just as it moved from the Ottoman Empire at around the time of the First World War to East Asia at around the time of the Second. In the early 2020s, that trend would explode.

Starting in late 2019, COVID-19 killed millions of people, triggered a global economic slump, and blighted global supply chains and freedom of movement. Of the major global economies, China was the most restrictive. Within Asia, China’s economic output started expanding slower than India’s, and in 2023 India’s population outstripped China’s.

*****

With the exception of certain countries like China, the global economy recovered rapidly from COVID-19, but inflation was high. It would be even higher after February 2022, when Russia mounted its second invasion of Ukraine. Sanctions on Russia and supply chain issues in Ukraine cut the supply of key commodities and upended dealings with the world’s largest country.

Politically, the invasion divided countries for and against it even more sharply than its predecessor in 2014. But nations containing more than half of the world’s population remained officially neutral towards Russia. This included highly populous countries in southern Asia as well as many others in emerging markets beyond Europe.

It is possible that this second invasion created a peak in deglobalization occurred in early 2022, when the world was partly locked down due to COVID and the invasion was upending the world order. Equally, the worst may be to come. During the tenure of Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen, one worry has been US-China tensions over Taiwan. Another is an escalation in Ukraine.

In the 1940s, it was impossible to say deglobalization had peaked until World War Two was over. Similarly, in the 2020s, we cannot say deglobalization has peaked until tensions between Russia and Ukraine have at least stabilized. Once that happens, we can fully assess the outcomes from the third era of deglobalization.?

Chapter 20: Third Deglobalization - Outcome

Over the course of this book, I have outlined a cycle that deglobalization has followed since birth. It emerges, escalates, peaks, and culminates in similar yet varying outcomes. It hands off to a period of reglobalization that does the same. And then the cycle starts again. There is no reason these cycles have to continue in this way. Equally, there is no sign that they will stop.

Outcomes from this era of deglobalization will only be fixed if it ends and a third era of reglobalization begins. Otherwise, they will be open-ended. Predicting exact results in advance is almost impossible. Nevertheless, the outcomes from the first two eras of deglobalization may give us clues.

Mass decolonization was a major outcome from both eras. However, nations now have very little in the way of overseas territories, especially in terms of the size of those territories’ populations. Even if those territories all became independent tomorrow, this probably wouldn’t number among the most significant results.

The second era of deglobalization perhaps gives us some better hints, which are reinforced to an extent by the first. Its outcomes phase started with the end of the Second World War, much as any outcomes phase today would likely start with a truce between Russia and Ukraine.

That phase, which began in 1945 and ended in the 1950s, had two major geopolitical features besides decolonization. The first feature was the rivalry between the West and the USSR. As an outcome of today’s deglobalization, it seems likely that we will still have a rivalry between the West and China, albeit of a rather different nature.

The second feature was the green shoots of non-alignment. In 1945 and 1947, Indonesia and India won their independence from the Netherlands and Britain, respectively. Geopolitically, they would avoid aligning with the West or the USSR. Similarly, Yugoslavia ceased to be aligned with the USSR in the wake of the Greek Civil War.

The Non-Aligned Movement came into existence formally in 1961. Although its prominence declined after the end of the Cold War, it is still in operation. Its member states constitute more than half of the world’s nations and represent more than half of the global population.

Today, non-alignment means greater neutrality. It does not mean declining to partner with either of today’s superpowers, the US and China. However, in the wake of today’s rivalry between the West and Russia, we are seeing a related phenomenon gain traction, which I will term dealignment.

*****

On March 2, 2022, the UN adopted a resolution deploring Russia’s most recent invasion of Ukraine. Over 140 countries supported it, while just five were against. However, China, India, and 33 other nations abstained. This meant that over half the world’s population declined to side with the West, with the overwhelming majority in neutral countries.

This dynamic has also worked the other way. Since the invasion, the ex-Soviet republics in central Asia did not support Russia in the UN resolution. They have increasingly courted China through forums like the first China-Central Asia summit. Turkey has also straddled multiple camps, using its NATO membership to act as a go-between.

In the developing world, various leaders have maintained dialogue with the West, China, and Russia. Lula da Silva in Brazil, Cyril Ramaphosa in South Africa, and Sheikh Hasina in Bangladesh are among those who have sought to balance all three relationships. For many emerging markets, there is little upside to angering any of the biggest geopolitical players.

“We believe in peaceful solutions… We never support any invasion or conflict. Bangladesh’s policy is friendship to all,” Hasina said in a recent TV interview. “We are close to everybody – China, USA, India – everybody. Those who support our development – we are with them.”

These comments also illustrate the flip side of dealignment. Initially, it appears to be fragmenting the world further and enabling deglobalization to persist. Over time, however, it may help countries avoid taking sides and even find some common ground. For the numerous challenges facing the world, a degree of cooperation will be important in resolving them.

Nowhere is this truer than the UN SDGs, which look unlikely to be fulfilled by the 2030 deadline. Dealignment may hinder progress on that agenda, but it will not undermine the urgency of the underlying environmental and social needs. Nations will have to explore new ways to address those needs, even if they do so more independently.

*****

The final question is whether reglobalization will eventually return for a third era. If we follow past experience, it will. There are too many benefits from globalization for the pendulum not to swing back in that direction at some point. But history has proved that reversal can be surprisingly slow.

As with the first two eras, a third era of reglobalization would have to witness lasting progress in international relations. However, the bar for that may be low and only visible in retrospect. The trigger for the second era of reglobalization was not the end of the Cold War, but the de-escalation of various actual or potential conflicts that arose during the early part of it.

In its early stages, a third era of reglobalization will likely continue to see advances in new technologies that might support globalization, such as in the field of communications. Over time, a third era would also have to be accompanied by landmark progress in how countries cooperate with each other on geopolitical, economic, and environmental issues.

As we witnessed after the Napoleonic Wars and World War Two, growing European unity would also help bolster reglobalization. If Russia and Ukraine reach a lasting peace agreement, that would likely support unity over the longer term. Resolution in other flashpoints like the Middle East and North Africa would also create a more constructive backdrop.

However, if reglobalization returns, the incentives behind deglobalization will not vanish permanently. Globalization will always create tensions among nations and groups that want more independence, just as deglobalization tends to widen international divides. Buy-in for reglobalization has always reached a breaking point – after which a new cycle has begun.

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[Copyright: Nicholas Rice, 2023.]