This essay reviews some of the leading recent arguments concerning the history of globalization. It is guided by a basic question: at what historic date can we begin to describe the globalization process? It will quickly become clear that this question hinges on the conceptualization of the key idea. The first section of this article outlines a brief history of the concept. It then assesses David Held et al.’s Global Transformations for its claim that state constricting globalization is new. The argument I will pose in response is that contemporary global integration is both exaggerated and precedented, that constraint upon the state is overestimated in the present and underestimated for the past. The cause of the distortion in perspective is the ahistorical abstract separation of political and economic affairs. Section 2 addresses various works that date the start of globalization before the contemporary era.
