UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS SESSION 2014–15 EC120 The World Economy in Historical Perspective Term Paper 2 By George Estephane: 1304052 Describe the steps taken in Western Europe during the two decades after 1945 to foster international trade. Assess the role of trade in Western Europe’s recovery from depression and war, making clear how relevant economic theories can be applied to support your assessment. This essay will focus on the measures Western Europe undertook in order to adopt and nurture international trade throughout the period 1945-1965.
For any country that wants to survive in the toughest of times, they need to have good trading capabilities. Very few countries are able to sustain themselves without indulging in intensive trade with other countries. Trading has been considered a good thing in the past, but with the changing world, there are doubts about the benefits of trading. There are some factors that lead to the development of trade networks between countries. When people started to settle in larger towns, the idea that you had to produce absolutely everything for survival, began to fade.
Benjamin Franklin said, “No nation was ever ruined by trade.” During the early modern era, technological advancements in shipbuilding and increased knowledge on wind and current patterns made global trading possible. The increased flow of trade in the 1300s through 1800s created important social relations and economic opportunities due to the increased integration of foreign people and desire to be wealthiest and most powerful, while improving government, culture, and ideas in the modern world. Global trading increased the spread of people, which also increased the spread of religion and culture.
European Imperialism Imperialization, a single word that would change numerous societies’ way of life dramatically. European imperialism lasted from the late 1800s to the early 1900s. With Europe’s countries power extending into other countries they wanted to change the society’s they reached to be similar to the their ways. Imperialism was a major part of Europe in the 19th and 20th century because it shaped the experiences of people in colonized nations through the economy and the political powers. In Europe the process of imperialization was a welcomed idea, but for people in colonized countries it meant the loss of their culture, through religion and their way of attire.
After the XVI century, Europe had a resurgence that allowed their nations to explore the world. European nations looked for how to extend its political and military power among the world. However, economic power appears as an important matter for the Empires´ maintenance and hence, trade appeared as a tool to create such Economic control. European Empires found opportunities to develop trade in Asian countries that faced instability. Developing political agreements in order to establish monopolies was the initial stage for future trade companies’ economic expansion.
The authors continue in contradicting this idea of a three-way, triangular trade system by calling it “misleading”. They explain how the trading system has many more factors and is much more than just a “triangle”. “What we call a triangle was really as round as the globe. (37)” The authors give direct evidence of a much more complicated trading system involving many countries.
In the article, “How Globalization Went Bad” by Steven Weber ET AL. The author gives several examples as to why having the United States as the single super power is not a good thing. Weber says, “The world has more international terrorism and more nuclear proliferation today than it did in 1990”. He believes International institutes have weakened and that the global financial system is unbalanced. Weber describes three axioms that he believes is causing globalization to go bad.
-Trends that characterized the First Era of Globalization include interludes of Vikings, Turkish, and Mongol peoples, integration of regional states, and inter-regional exchange of technology, crops, and diseases. From 1000 to 1500 C.E. rulership of societies changed from being controlled by large, central societies to being overrun by nomadic people like the Turkish and Mongols, but the political foundation that they laid helped to stimulate trade between regions and highly integrated them. They controlled the trade routes between societies. The government was mostly clan-based and one could attain a high office position based on merit and knowledge rather than kinship.
Many western countries are now shying away from globalism as a whole. Globalist and nationalist have begun to clash and argue with each other, leaving the world asking which system the world should follow. In order to ensure prosperity and success for every country, globalism is needed over nationalism to an extend. Since the majority of trade any country does is international, and it’s been shown that individual economies are interdependent on each, the current state of everyone’s economy is global.
3. Globalization Throughout the last decades, globalization became a real phenomenon, but history tells us that it is actually not a new social, historical phenomena, but has, under different names and manifestations, been with us for a long time. It is actually not only the continuation of the liberalization of international trade, which began in the mid-19th century with the launch of cross-border trade over long distances and later with intensive large-scale mobility of labor and capital. During capitalism, globalization has amplified due to the lust for profit, which is driven by capitalists across the globe. Indeed, globalization has significantly strengthened ever since.
The idea of “Globalisation” has successfully brought people and nations of the world together by the increased of non-territorial social activities, the growing speed of transportations and communications, and the rise of cross-border interconnections. Globalisation is everywhere, it is a combination of environment, culture, society, politics and economy. Economic globalisation is one of the most influential aspects to globalisation in this modern society, which introduces free trade, marketisation, liberalisation and the movement of labour. However, local and international may share different economic views, as to contrast this, two same news items on August 20th, 2014 covered by The Moscow Times (Reuters 2014) as local perspective and The Wall Street Journal (Hansergard 2014) as international perspective, are being used for the study. European markets are affected by the conflict between Russia and the West over Ukraine, especially the beer industries are now further suffering low consumer spending in Russia since last year restriction on beer.
This return to a more familiar and reassuring time was in line with a feeling of distress and fear of globalization and industrialization. Internationalism had lost its appeal and it was now considered as something extremely dangerous: the root of all evil and the cause of European
Introduction Nowadays people can communicate easily. They can share their ideas, their cultures even with people who are not in their countries. They can trade, transporting products around the world in just a few days. This is a big economy where everything related to each other. This is globalization.
Globalization and Nation States Globalization has integrated and intertwined the economies of the world. In the world today, every nation has become independent on every other nation, be it through trade or through finance. Developing countries today are attracting large rounds of foreign investment, and this foreign investment is coming from the developed countries. Thus, the money of the developed countries is today invested in the developing countries.
Globalisation could be defined from a descriptive and prescriptive sphere of the economy. Descriptive, globalisation is views as the fastest growth processes of the world-wide connectivity
