Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
ment of which is usually attributed to the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648.
The principles established by this treaty were that the state was viewed as
exercising comprehensive (over all issues), supreme (no superior author-
ity), unqualified (by any other state), and exclusive (no joint sovereignty)
control (Easton 2007). Importantly, these principles were established at
a time when - in comparison to today - the prevailing environment was
one in which economic activity was primarily contained within an indi-
vidual nation's own colonial systems (Findlay and O'Rourke 2007). This
nation-empire structure is in marked contrast to the modern notion of the
nation state, which is a relatively recent concept, and primarily a result
of the nineteenth and twentieth century breaking up of the very empires
which had driven the globalization processes for some three hundred years
(Ferguson 2006). That this is so can be seen from the fact that only about
ten of today's 190 or so nation states existed largely in the form they do
now at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and only twenty or so
existed largely in their current form even in the mid-nineteenth century
(Easton 2007). Yet, this is not to imply that states have necessarily become
smaller over time because of globalization processes. For example, the
micro-state model of the German confederation of 35 monarchies and
four free cities in the period 1815‒1866 became obsolete by the mid nine-
teenth century, primarily due to the falling costs of distance and increasing
regional trade (Easton 2007). Similarly, countries such as Italy, Australia,
Russia, Canada and the United States all underwent processes of enlarge-
ment as access to the raw material inputs required by industrial systems
became increasingly urgent. Institutional changes giving rise to the
newly-unified and integrated countries such as Germany, Italy, Australia,
Canada and the United States, can in many ways be a seen as a rational
reaction to nineteenth century forces of globalization, which in some con-
texts called for larger states, and in others for smaller states.
Between the middle of the eighteenth century and the end of the
nineteenth century it was the empire expansion of Great Britain which
more than any other nation played the dominant role in spearheading
globalization. The British economy above all was transformed by tech-
nological change, and only at the dawn of the twentieth century did the
US economy overtake that of the UK in scale, as the westward expan-
sion of the US provided for the resource and material inputs required for
the American East Coast and Mid-West manufacturing industries. Yet,
as the two dominant economic superpowers, it was the technological,
financial and institutional interrelations between Great Britain and the
USA which uniquely moulded the emerging forms and patterns of MNE
business and globalization during the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries.
