Historical Pattern in Human Activities

The history of mankind is fundamentally a history of expansionism motivated by the incessant desire to accumulate wealth.

Lets re-look at the past to prove my point and interpret it in our own context:

1. In the year 325 before Christ Era, Buddhism expanded and combined the powers of world religion, trade, economy and imperial armies for the first time. Alexander the Great sues for peace with Chandragupta at Gerosia. This event created an eastward link among overland routes between Mediterranean, Persia, India and Central Asia.

2. In the 1st centuries during Christ Era, Buddhism made its first major appearance in China under the Han dynasty, and consolidated the cultural links across the Eurasian Steppe into India. This marked the foundation of “silk road”.

3. In the period from 650 to 850 Islam expanded from the western Mediterranean to India.

4. From 960-1270, the Song Dynasty in China produced the economic output, financial instruments, technologies and created the momentum for the medieval world economy to flourish linking Europe and China by land and sea across Eurasia and Indian Ocean.

5. In 1100 Genghis Khan integrated overland routes across Eurasia.

6. In 1300 marked the birth of Ottoman Empire and its expansion in Europe, North Africa and Middle East connecting politically overland with dynasties in Central Asia and India. This event created the imperial arch of integration that spawned a huge expansion of trade with Europe but raised the cost of trade in Asia for Europeans as a result Genoese merchants moved their wealth to Spain in search for a Western Sea route to the Indies.

7. In 1492 and 1498 Columbus and De Gama traveled west and east to the Indies, inaugurating an age of European seaborne empires.

8. In 1650, the expansion of slave trade sustained the development of Atlantic economy, giving birth to integrated economic/industrial systems across the Ocean. This event has resulted in the accumulation of profits in Europe during the zenith of mercantilism and rise of the Enlightenment.

9. In 1776/1789, “US and French Revolutions” marked the creation of modern states based on alliances between military and business interests and on popular representation in nationalist governments. This event marked a new imperial expansion where economic interest of “the people” consolidated assets for economic growth. It also led to more militarized British, Dutch and French imperial growth in Asia. These national empires expanded during the industrial revolution provoking class struggles, and new ideas and revolutionary movements within national states.

10. In 1885, the treaties of Berlin marked the expansion by the European and American empires overseas. This was also the period where international law is established.

11. In 1929, the great depression hits all parts of the world at the same time. It was also the period where simultaneous price rise in most of the world happened and the 1st World War broke out.

12. Between 1944-1950, decolonization of European empires in Asia and Africa produced the world of national states and for the first time a world of legal-representative-economic institution called the United Nations is established along with the Bretton Wood System which is an international monetary management that established the rules for commercial and financial relations among the world’s major industrial states.

13. 1989 marked the end of cold war and the globalization of post-industrial capitalism.

In all the above expansionism, there are always victors as there are vanquished, there are losers and there are winners. What distinguishes today's expansionism is the fact that the losers are not only those at the middle of the pyramid but mother earth. You destroy the coral reefs and it will take a century to rebuild them. You destroy the rainforests and it will take another century to restore them . But you destroy the one and only planet earth, and your children and their generation will have no more place to live.

What is interesting and amazing in today's globalization is the availability of infrastructure that allows people to communicate beyond their borders. It somehow democratize information enabling knowledge to travel at the speed of the light.

This capability generates enormous potential for the knowledge-savvy middle class to perform a dual role of an employee locally and an entrepreneur globally selling his information or knowledge to the world outside.

Expansionism in that sense is no longer limited to the business empires of the world but to anyone who has the skills and knowledge needed to become an infopreneur in the global economy.

Source: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~dludden/global1.htm