Economics and History of Globalization

The course will commence on Monday, 15th September 2025, at 14:30 via Noto (room to be decided) and will continue on Tuesday and Wednesday at 14:30, via Noto.

COURSE: 'ECONOMIC GLOBALISATION IN HISTORY'

Globalisation: what past and what future? Is it a phenomenon driven by the 'invisible hand' of the market, or by the economic policies of states and the interests of companies? Is it a path towards a richer, freer and fairer world, or is it a source of inequalities and social and environmental problems? This course explores the complex reality of globalisation, examining its causes and effects from a historical and economic perspective from the 19th century to the beginning of the 21st century.

The course is divided into three thematic sections. Part A analyses the globalisation of the nineteenth century and the expansion of international trade in goods, capital and people. Europe and interstate competition played a decisive role in constructing a new world economy that appears to be organised along centre-periphery lines. This growing integration was driven by several factors: industrialisation and the transport revolution; international capital investment; mass migration; the forced opening of the Chinese and Japanese markets; the construction of the British Empire; the colonisation of Africa; and the economic transformation of the United States and Latin America. In the last decades of the century, this growing interdependence also led to the first deep international depression.

Interrupted by the First World War, and then by the WWII, economic globalisation resumed in the post-second war period in a new bipolar world order dominated by the US and the USSR. In this context, Part B compares planned economies (those of the USSR and China) with capitalist economies and examines the economic development of the USA, the European economic miracle, the Japanese economic miracle and the economic miracle of the so-called 'Asian Tigers'. The lectures will then examine the crucial transition from the hegemony of Keynesian economic policies in the early 1970s to the rise of neoliberal theories, which promoted a new phase of economic liberalisation.

Part C will focus on the latter part of the 20th century, when countries such as those in Latin America, China, India, the former Soviet Union and the European Union changed their economic policies, opening up more and more to foreign investment and international trade. This encouraged the development of multinational corporations, which grew considerably in size, and the financialisation of the economy. Since the 1990s, the new globalisation, reinforced by the internet revolution and the extension of neoliberal policies, has brought greater prosperity to some social groups. However, it has also increased inequalities, instability, and international financial crises, as well as systemic fragility due to the global networks and chains necessary for producing and transporting many essential goods. Finally, the emergence of China as an economic giant at the beginning of the twenty-first century is discussed in the context of the new multipolar world order, where competition between states has not diminished, and a new 'race' for the world's natural resources has intensified. For some years now, a process of contraction and restructuring of international economic interdependence has been underway, accelerated by the pandemic and military confrontations. This complex change in direction is leading to the regionalisation of the world economy.