Globalisation: three waves of change

From the Daily chart section of the Economist comes this chart on the three waves of globalisation.



As historians of globalisation point out, globalisation has been with us for a long time. The Economist writes

Industrialisation and technological changes—such as the invention of the steam ship, which produced cheaper means of migrating and trading between continents—spurred one period of globalisation in the 19th century. In similar fashion new inventions—jet aircraft, the internet—helped to encourage later periods of it. In a new World Trade Report published this week, the WTO compared three broad periods, looking at global growth in GDP, in population and in the trade of goods. Migration rates are shown only for four countries of the “New” world.