Globalizations past: From Lahaina to London in the 1820s

Globalization is generally described as a phenomenon of the last two decades. It is characterized as rapidly transforming the world through the global transfer of signs and symbols as well as capital and labour. In this short space of time there has been a rapid expansion of global capital markets and the geographical fragmentation of production and the creation of transnational urban centers linked to one another and increasingly separated from their hinterlands (Sassen 1994; 1996). An increased flow of people and information has followed a transformation in the technology of transportation and communications. The twin effects of mass migration and the expansion of electronic media have created a rupture in the work of the imagination, transforming the way selves and worlds are conceived, as new resources and stories for the making of these selves become available. The diasporic social worlds created by mass migrations reshape the possibilities of modern subjectivity (Appadurai 1996: 3-4). At the same time, a new emphasis on human rights and the practices of international intervention in sovereign states, while still limited, may foreshadow a more powerful transnational community and some redefinition of the meanings of sovereignty (see Lyons and Mastanduno 1995; Donnelly 1995).