Globalization is one of the most controversial issues of our time. It is tied to international trade and trade wars, immigration and refugee crises, terrorism and more. People used to declare that globalization was inevitable, but now the backlash against it seems just as global. What is globalization? Is it as wonderful or terrible as people claim? This course seeks to answer these questions by exploring when and why certain places became better connected, people became more mobile and things gained wider circulation. The Indian Ocean has been called the “cradle of globalization” because it has been an important space of economic and cultural exchange for millennia. We can then see where and how ideas, commodities and people became incorporated into the Indian Ocean world and spread beyond it.
The course is divided into four thematic sections: technology and exchange, politics and space, people and mobility, and culture and representation. Each theme will cover three to four weeks and will allow us to explore specific components of the dynamics we think of as globalization.