A Big History of Globalization (World-Systems Evolution and Global Futures)

This book presents the history of globalization as a network-based story in the context of Big History. Departing from the traditional historic discourse, in which communities, cities, and states serve as the main units of analysis, the authors instead trace the historical emergence, growth, interconnection, and merging of various types of networks that have gradually encompassed the globe. They also focus on the development of certain ideas, processes, institutions, and phenomena that spread through those networks to become truly global.

The book specifies five macro-periods in the history of globalization and comprehensively covers the first four, from roughly the 9th - 7th millennia BC to World War I. For each period, it identifies the most important network-related developments that facilitated (or even spurred on) such transitions and had the greatest impacts on the history of globalization.

By analyzing the world system’s transition to new levels of complexity and connectivity, the book provides valuable insights into the course of Big History and the evolution of human societies.

Julia V. Zinkina is a Senior Research Fellow of the International Research Laboratory on Demography and Human Capital at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA) in Moscow. She also holds a research position at the Faculty of Global Studies, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia. Her current research interests include demographic processes at global and national levels, worldwide social networks, sociopolitical destabilization, macrohistory and long-term trends. She is the author of more than 90 publications including two monographs in Russian.

David Gilbert Christian is the Director of Macquarie University's Big History Institute, Australia. He is a member of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities, and the Royal Society of N.S.W. In 2004, he published the first monograph on "Big History", Maps of Time (University of California Press). With Bill Gates, he is a co-founder of the "Big History Project", which has developed free online high-school courses in big history. Since 2013, he has been Director of Macquarie University's Big History Institute, and led the collaboration of twenty academics across all faculties to develop Macquarie University's MOOC on big history: "Big History: Connecting Knowledge", on the Coursera platform.

Leonid E. Grinin is a Senior Research Professor at the Laboratory for Monitoring of the Sociopolitical Destabilization Risks at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia; the Deputy Director of the Eurasian Center for Big History & System Forecasting and Senior Research Professor at the Institute for Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Russian journal Age of Globalization as well as a co-editor of the international journals Social Evolution & History and Journal of Globalization Studies. His current research interests include sociopolitical destabilization, macrohistory and long-term trends, sociocultural evolution, theory of history, world-systems studies, long-term development of political systems, globalization studies, economic cycles, and Big History studies. Grinin is the author of more than 380 scholarly publications. His 26 monographs include Great Divergence and Great Convergence: A Global Perspective (Springer, 2015) and Economic Cycles, Crises, and the Global Periphery (Springer, 2016).

Ilya V. Ilyin is the Dean of the Faculty of Global Studies and the Head of the Department of Globalistics at the Lomonosov Moscow State University,  Russia. He is the author of over 200 publications related to the problems of global studies, theory of globalistics, various political and socio-natural processes.

Alexey I. Andreev is an Associate Professor and Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Global Studies, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia. His academic interests include global social dynamics, forecasting and strategic planning of national development. He is the author of over 70 scholarly publications and monographs. His books explore the history of the student movement of Russia, the issues of sustainable development of Russia and the world, the economics and sociology of education and science, new approaches to the study of globalization and other global processes. 

Ivan A. Aleshkovski is an Associate Professor and Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Global Studies, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia. His academic interests include globalistics, international migration flows, migration policy, economic and demographic development of Russia and the world. He has authored more than 150 journal articles and contributions. +

Sergey G. Shulgin is the Vice-Director of the International Research Laboratory on Demography and Human Capital at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA) in Moscow. He is the author of more than 50 publications and holds a B.S. in computer science as well as an M.A. and Ph.D. in economics. His current research interests include demographic processes at global and national levels, global social networks, mathematical and econometric modeling of social processes and phenomena. 

Andrey V. Korotayev heads the Laboratory for Monitoring of the Sociopolitical Destabilization Risks at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia. He is also Senior Research Professor at the Institute of Oriental Studies and Institute for African Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences. He is the author of over 300 scholarly publications,including the monographs Ancient Yemen (Oxford University Press, 1995), Great Divergence and Great Convergence: A Global Perspective (Springer, 2015) and Economic Cycles, Crises, and the Global Periphery (Springer, 2016). At present, he is a coordinator of the Russian Academy of Sciences Presidium Project "Complex System Analysis and Mathematical Modeling of Global Dynamics". He is a laureate of a Russian Science Support Foundation in "The Best Economists of the Russian Academy of Sciences" Nomination (2006). In 2012, he was awarded the Gold Kondratieff Medal by the International N. D. Kondratieff Foundation.