Jeffrey D.SachsThe Ages of Globalization: Geography, Technology, and InstitutionsColumbia University Press, 2020. 280 p. $24.95

Abstract

As we enter the third decade of the twenty-first century, the author identifies three challenges facing an increasingly globalized humanity: a destabilizing increase in economic inequality; a devastating global environmental crisis; and the risk of global conflict that could annihilate the species. This book, an outgrowth of three lectures given at the Oxford School of Geography and the Environment in 2017, presents Sachs’ map of how we got here, and his blueprint for overcoming these challenges. His map (Chapters 2–8) traces seven distinct “ages of globalization”: the Paleolithic (70,000–10,000 BCE), the Neolithic (10,000–3,000 BCE), the Equestrian (3,000–1000 BCE), the Classical (1000 BCE–1500 CE), the Ocean (1500–1800), the Industrial (1800–2000), and the Digital (2000–). Each “age” entails a new global change that emerged from the interplay of physical geography, technology, and institutions. The Paleolithic Age entailed the dispersal out from Africa of small groups of subsistence foragers. The Neolithic Age began with plant cultivation that allowed for denser settlements and more complex governmental structures. The Equestrian Age surfaced when peoples in the steppes of Eurasia domesticated the horse and used rapid movement and cavalry attacks to conquer the densely settled agricultural societies in the continent's milder latitudes. The Classical Age entailed globalization by politics as imperial empires (Assyria, Persia, Greece, Rome, India, China, Ottoman, and Mongol) consciously sought to create global civilizations. Columbus connecting the Old World and the New began the Ocean Age when superior naval power allowed European empires to quickly form, spanning oceans and climate zones with new economies involving the exchange of flora, fauna, diseases, and peoples, including many chattel slaves. James Watt commercializing the steam engine in England, with its coal deposits and legal protections for invention, initiated the Industrial Age during which less productive “organic” economies based on muscle power were replaced with highly productive fossil fuel economies. We have recently entered into the Digital Age when the massive transmission of data in an environment of rapidly multiplying computational power and increasingly sophisticated information technologies is upending the global economic and political order. Sachs sees a storyline running through these seven ages (p. 12): “one of unfolding progress, albeit progress repeatedly marked by injustice, inequalities, and extraordinary violence.” Progress is measured in terms of people, production, and place of residence. World population progressed from 2 million in 10,000 BCE, to 45 million in 3,000 BCE, to 461 million in 1500, and to 6.1 billion in 2000. The proportion living in cities went from 1 percent in 1 CE, to 3.6 percent in 1500, to 16 percent in 1900 and to 55 percent in 2020. Global output per capita grew from US$ 400 (1990 dollars) in 1 CE, to US$ 500 in 1800, and to US$ 7,400 in 2010. “Super-exponential” growth of population, production, and urbanization in the very recent past is the context in which our new challenges are unfolding. Sachs, acknowledging ongoing fertility decline, is somewhat optimistic about bringing rapid population growth under control. The massive pollution, climate change, and loss of biodiversity caused by several centuries of fossil fuel production is a more difficult challenge. He calls for a transition to renewable energy and a universal commitment to sustainable development but is not sure that changes can be made quickly enough to avoid irreparable planetary harm. Moving from a global hegemonic power arrangement to a multipolar one without provoking military conflict is another challenge that will require a deft hand. And he recognizes that ending debilitating poverty, even in a world where plenty for all is possible, will only happen if a common social democratic ethos develops, an ethos that he finds at the core of major world religions. Many twenty-first century problems are transnational and global in nature: water sources, pollution, and disease all easily cross borders, and climate changing gases all rise into a shared atmosphere. Sachs calls on nations to accept transnational authorities and work to reform the United Nations. In the end, though, having just read a history of globalization that is full of conquest, greed, and chauvinism, readers are left to wonder if humans can possibly change enough to heed these calls to action.