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By Nate Bowling
At no other time in human history would a life like mine have been possible. I’m a US citizen born in the furthest northwest corner of the country—a region that was occupied exclusively by Indigenous people for thousands of years, right up until the 1804 Lewis & Clark expedition. Today, I teach at an international school more than 7,500 miles from where I was born, interacting daily with students who represent 63 different nationalities. I drive a Japanese-manufactured SUV to work, and I’m typing this blog post on a MacBook that I assume was assembled in China. I cheer passionately for a football team whose home is in Merseyside, England, and I’m currently using a Berlin-based app to teach myself Spanish for the third time, since what I learned in high school and university simply didn’t stick.
Globalization and the connectivity it entails defines us and our era.
Globalization touches nearly every aspect of our lives. While I might be somewhat of an “edge case” with my personal story that spans continents and cultures, if you examine your own experience and the lives of your students, you’ll likely identify similar patterns. Whether it’s the technology we use, the food we eat, our cultural touchstones, or the international trade networks we rely on, our day-to-day existence is steeped in the promises and challenges of a global interconnected system.
To introduce my students to the topic of globalization, I start at the beginning.
Globalization is as old as the Silk Roads
Many think of globalization as a twentieth-century phenomenon. I like to frame it for students as a phenomenon that has ebbed and flowed throughout history. Yes, we live in the era of “Capital ‘G’ Globalization,” but it’s a force that has shaped human history since the time of the Mongols. In our world history course, which covers 1200 CE to the present, globalization and connectivity are themes we introduce early and revisit often:
We frame the Silk Roads as the world’s first internet. We think of the Silk Roads as an international network of trade that connected the Afro-Eurasian landmass. We highlight how goods, languages, religions, and even the bubonic plague traveled across the world.
The Silk Roads—an early “internet”—were a series of trade routes that connected people throughout Afro-Eurasia from 130 BCE until 1453 CE. By OER Project, CC BY 4.0.
We also consider how the rise of technologies—primarily improvements in sailmaking and overwater transport—and political events—such as the rise of the Ottoman Empire—led to the decline of the Silk Roads and landlocked globalization and increased the pace and scale of global connectivity.
We explore the infectious nature of the Enlightenment. When talking about the concept of political revolutions, we highlight how contagious the ideas were. We teach our students about how the themes and ideas from the Enlightenment and French Revolution spilled across the Atlantic to the British Colonies in North America, Argentina, Spain’s Gran Colombia, Haiti, and ended up flowing back into Europe, resulting in the revolutions of 1848.
Speaking of European revolutions, in a 2024 episode of my podcast I spoke with Nathan Perl-Rosenthal of the University of Southern California about his book The Age of Revolutions, in which he explores how revolutionary movements in Europe and beyond were deeply interconnected, borrowing ideas, strategies, and inspiration from one another.
We explain how modern globalization emerged after World War II. The final major touchpoint that we hit regarding globalization is the most familiar: the post-World War II, US-led consensus that resulted in the establishment of the United Nations, World Trade Organization, and various trade regimes, such as the European Economic Community (which eventually became the EU). When teaching about this period, we conduct a historical Model United Nations on the Suez Crisis and the international response.
We conclude with the current state of globalization, focusing on the globalization of supply chains, the integration of global economies through trade, and the “Great Acceleration” of global economic development. We follow that with research into the commensurate increase in the global consumption of natural resources.
Life-changing achievements
The story of modern globalization and connectivity is a tale of human progress. After World War II, the US emerged as a major architect of a new global order, helping to build multilateral institutions and negotiate treaties designed to promote peace and economic growth. While that order now faces challenges—including rising protectionism and tariff battles, which I explored in a 2025 episode of the podcast with economist Abdullah Al Bahrani, from Northern Kentucky University—it has undeniably lengthened lives and enhanced prosperity for billions.
The modern system of economic globalization was largely created at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944. © Bettmann / Getty Images.
The creation of a common market through the EU helped transform the centuries-long rivalry between France and Germany—marked by the Franco-Prussian War, World War I, and World War II—into a partnership. Economic interdependence made future wars not only undesirable but impractical, laying the foundation for peace and cooperation in postwar Europe.
International cooperation in public health led to the eradication of smallpox and helped globalize the production of vaccines and antibiotics—developments that have saved countless lives and reshaped the way we respond to disease.
Globalization’s dual nature: Opportunities and challenges
However, the narrative of globalization is not solely one of opportunity. While advancements in technology and international cooperation have opened up possibilities, they have also led to unintended side effects such as heightened economic inequality and environmental degradation.
There are always trade-offs.
Refugees who have fled conflict in Syria. More than 3 million reside in Turkey today. By EU Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
The rapid pace of globalization has sometimes outstripped our ability to manage its consequences. The current backlash against globalization and immigration in the US, for instance, has roots that extend back decades: the flow of migrant labor into the US following the creation of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994 (NAFTA, now called USCMA) is one example. Similar anti-immigration sentiments have arisen in Southern Europe and Turkey. Elsewhere, the hemorrhaging of high-paying manufacturing jobs in places like Northern England and East Germany to states like Vietnam and China has created political resentment and reduced the standard of living for the displaced factory workers.
Our Role: Contextualizing Contemporary Issues
As educators, we’re tasked with helping students distinguish the historical signal from the headline noise that so often dominates the daily news cycle. Globalization should be seen not just as a phenomenon imposed on us all by modernity but as a dynamic, ongoing process in which we and our students have agency over how we engage and respond.
Similarly, when examining the global supply chains behind modern consumer goods, it’s important to help students see both sides of the equation: the economic efficiency and affordability that come from overseas manufacturing, and the vulnerabilities it creates—from exploited workers abroad, to factory closures at home, to fragile logistics networks that can be upended by pandemics, political tensions, or even a cargo ship stuck in the Suez Canal.
In March 2021, the Ever Given, a Panama-flagged cargo ship, got stuck in the Suez Canal, roiling global supply chains. © picture alliance / Getty Images.
By offering a more historical perspective to globalization, we can avoid the pitfalls of knee-jerk editorializing or partisan debate. Instead, we can provide students with the analytical tools to view current events in the context of long-term trends. The aim is not to incite controversy but to nurture a well-rounded understanding of how interconnected human societies can harness opportunities while confronting inherent challenges.
In this way, globalization becomes a lens through which students can critically examine both our achievements and the collective struggles ahead.
About the author: Nate Bowling teaches world history and political science at the American Community School of Abu Dhabi. He is a past Washington State Teacher of the Year, host of the Nerd Farmer Podcast, and author of the Takes & Typos newsletter.
Cover image: Aerial view of container terminal at Shanghai Deep-Water Port. © iStock / Getty Images Plus.
