Building Blocks of Globalization
The first part of this book and its chapters offer the reader a philosophical, if not inherent, and biological argument of the ingrained human social need to engage in the exchange process, thereby laying the basis for the eventual evolution of the commercialization of this natural phenomenon. It portrays the commercial process as a collateral, if not supportive, element in the development of civilization on Earth. Part II is broken up into the ancient trading world and the age of discovery that opened up the world to the enlarged commercial environment, a semichronological evolution of area-based civilizations and their trading exercises that contributed to the globalization phenomenon.
In this section we take a look at globalization through the prospective of business subjects to show how the building blocks, inherent in today’s global commercial process, originated. The sale and marketing of ancient universal commodities such as olive oil, salt, incense, and spices provide an insight into the product-based principles of intercontinental trade while the desire for silk became the next key connecting component of East-West commercialism. As the world began to commercially grow, a number of complementary elements that supported and sustained the global business environment emerged while at the same time contributing to the development and growth of civilization. The advent of writing and language was fostered by the exchange process as an invention based on the need for keeping a record of transactions between commercial parties. An infrastructure of cross territorial roadways became the chief conduit for the exchange of cultures as well as trade goods. Brick and mortar structures strengthened the process and became models for the design of cosmopolitan and the socialization of people. The evolution of mediums of exchange, the advent of money, along with other commercial financial instruments, furthered the development of the global business imperative while contributing to the building of universal bridges of commonly accepted material values among people. A system of secular laws allowed for a platform of private commercially protected rights to be constructed that further enhanced the exchange process while also addressing the social need for regulated order of societies.