Latin American Globalization in Historical Perspective

Abstract

This article places the current era of globalization in its larger historical perspective by looking at present trends through the lens of the first wave of globalization in the 16th and 17th centuries and the second wave that extended from the middle of the 19th century through the First World War or even until the crisis of modern capitalism known as the great depression. It draws special attention to issues of forced and free labor, forced and free migration, the efforts to rip apart traditional ways of life and resistance to these efforts by the oppressed, and the unequal distribution of wealth due to national and international class interests and the need to keep the wage bill low in the developing world.