Pim De Zwart and Jan Luiten van Zanden. The Origins of Globalization. World Trade in the Making of the Global Economy, 1500–1800. [New Approaches to Social and Economic History.] Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [etc.] 2018. xv, 338 pp. Ill. Maps. £64.99. (Paper: £21.99; E-book: $24.00)

International Review of Social History

This is a great little book of deceptive appearance. In barely  pages, the authors have taken on the task of explaining the origins of globalizationand its consequencesbetween  and , with very compelling results. Indeed, by looking at long-distance maritime trade, the book offers abundant persuasive empirical evidence and an interpretative synthesis of the "global connections" that transformed the world in the early modern period. The substantial introduction situates the book's contribution to the literature. It engages well with, and supersedes, earlier debates about "soft" and "hard" globalization, making a strong case for the early modern episode. It develops the four "carriers" of the growth of global trade: the European states system; the technological and institutional innovations (in Europe); Europe's surplus income and demand; and the American silver and gold riches, being the single exogenous factor in the process. Each of these factors may well deserve an entire book in its own right. Chapter two identifies and measures the "key trends" of such global connections: shipping and transport costs; silver and other commodities flows; prices; and movementsvoluntary and coercedof people. The labels for "carriers" and "trends" could quite possibly have been swapped. The result was the creation and integration of a growing global market traceable to the convergence of silverdenominated prices (p. ). Chapters three to nine follow the effects in the relevant geographies based on an up-to-date discussion of each region's recent economic historiography. The authors highlight the interaction of globalization with "local conditions" and the agency of non-European peoples and polities as a way to de-centre the analysis from a European baseline. The Eurocentric undertones of some of the secondary literature, however, do not always assist them well. The narrative suggestively starts from the part of the world most transformed by the process, Latin America, followed by the "slave trade from Africa", the "decline of South Asia", the developmental reversal of South East Asia, and the "limited" globalization of East Asia. The geographic rationale for separating the "[e]xport-led development of North America" is unclear, but it foretells a distinct trajectory that is carefully discussed. Together with the chapter on Europe, the book sets apart winners from losers. Chapter ten redresses the regional focus thus far with a cross section of the issues presented in the introduction to outline a global analytical narrative. Thus, "currency", "production", "consumption", "populations", "cities", and, more processual, "divergence" and "empires" serve as a foreword for the long-term "global consequences", the actual conclusions of the book. Given the remarkable breadth of this book, I will comment only on some of those aspects that I can claim some familiarity with. The Origins has an interesting take on the role of silver, discussed at unusual length in various chaptersit has more entries than Europe in the index!-and the discussion is more informed than similar syntheses. The authors oscillate between characterizing silver as a IRSH  (), pp.