Causes of globalisation

The flows of ideas, money, goods and people are not new. Trade along the Silk Route, the spread of religions, and empires all moved things across the world for thousands of years.

What is new about today's globalisation is the scale and the speed of these flows. Things that once took months now take seconds.

Technology is the critical cause:

• the telegraph, telephone and microchip revolutionised communication; the internet and mobile phones followed;
• cheap and fast transport moves goods and people around the world.

Compare an earlier change: the invention of printing made books and newspapers cheap, and that laid the basis for nationalism, as people far apart began to feel part of one nation. In the same way, today's technology makes people feel part of one connected world.

The flows do not move equally fast. Capital and commodities move fastest and widest: money crosses the world in seconds, and goods are shipped everywhere. People move much less freely, because countries guard their borders with visas.

Technology alone is not enough. People must also recognise that they are connected: that bird flu in one country, a tsunami in the Indian Ocean, or an economic crisis in one market can affect them too. This awareness of interconnection is part of globalisation.

So globalisation has many causes, not one: technology, economics, politics and changing ideas together.