Globalisation, a process commonly understood to have pulled different regions of the world together, did not suddenly disappear during the decades of decolonisation.
Our aim is to do so by exploring over the 100 years in question the continuities and discontinuities in the globalising forces of empire. Notwithstanding the fact that the relationship between empire and globalisation is probably the most widely debated aspect of that past, there have in fact been very few attempts to put the century from 1870 to 1970, encompassing the eras of pre-war ‘high imperialism’, inter-war ‘de-globalisation’, and post-war decolonisation into a single, overarching narrative. It argues that globalisation very much has a past as well as a present. This article looks broadly at Europe's empires, with a particular focus on the British and French. 1 Empires, upon which the sun did always eventually set, have thus been a central feature of our modern globalised world.
Indeed, the extraordinary empires carved out by the Manchus, the Mughals, and the Ottomans, as well as the Spanish, the Dutch, the British, and the French, profoundly altered the way in which those who inhabited the lands over which these powers ruled envisioned their societies, gauged political possibilities, and marked out trade routes. Much of our global past was forged in the crucible of the great ethno-cultural entities that we call empires, whether Asian, European, or American. Aspirations to empire have been a constant of human history.
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