Steve Harris taught modern European and world history at San Francisco State University for many years and is the co-founder of the History for the 21st Century project. He is teaching "A History of Globalization" with us this spring.
You’re tackling an enormous subject in just six classes. Definitely ambitious.
It’s ambitious — but not too ambitious. I’ve taught a course called "A History of Everything", and it starts with the Big Bang. So this one is a little more manageable.
What interests me about globalization is that it’s often treated as something modern, but it really isn’t. One of the most overlooked aspects of globalization is that it begins with us. We all started in Africa. The very first phase of globalization was the human diaspora, the spread of humans across the planet.
What we usually think of as globalization today is really the story of how those scattered pieces eventually got reconnected.
How did early humans understand the world they lived in?
For most of human history, the world was very small. People lived in small groups scattered across the planet, and most had little or no awareness of people far beyond their immediate region.
Even 5,000 years ago, we see evidence of regional trade — not extensive, but enough that people knew there were others out there. The Greeks, in the classical period, understood that the Earth was round. But for the vast majority of people, even a few hundred years ago, the idea of traveling far from where they were born was unimaginable.
From our perspective, that world seems tiny. We think nothing of driving from San Francisco to Sacramento. For most people in the past, going 90 miles from home would have been the trip of a lifetime. Their worlds were small; ours is as big as the planet.
As people’s sense of the world expanded, what connected them more quickly — ideas, goods, technology?
It was all of those things, working together. Trade was hugely important, and exploration played a major role, particularly beginning in the 15th century. What’s often forgotten is that both the Chinese and the Europeans were engaged in extensive exploration at that time. The Chinese stopped; the Europeans didn’t.
By 1522, Magellan’s crew had circumnavigated the globe. Exploration was partly about glory and religion — claiming territory and souls — but probably the biggest driver was trade and the pursuit of wealth. Trade created incentives to keep reconnecting parts of the world that had been separated for tens of thousands of years.
What about a backlash against globalization? Has that always existed in some form?
It depends on how you define globalization. If you were living in India in the 18th century and the British were taking control, you might resent that quite a bit. Is that globalization? In a sense, yes.
Today’s backlash is often framed as a loss of control and resistance to interdependence. That’s where imperialism and colonialism come in. They were mechanisms through which globalization spread, particularly through European empires. Those systems drove trade and the movement of ideas — sometimes in both directions, sometimes very unevenly.
But even those who raise concerns about globalization regularly make use of it: in the clothes they wear or the technology they carry around with them. One of my favorite ways to make globalization concrete is through food. I show a Google map of London highlighting all the curry shops. Food is a wonderful lens for understanding globalization. Living in Berkeley, you can easily access cuisines from dozens of cultures. That didn’t happen by accident — that’s history on a plate.
Let’s talk a bit about your own journey. How’d you come to teach?
I spent about 30 years as a lawyer and businessperson. Eventually, I decided I wanted to do something different, so I went back to school, earned a PhD, and taught European and World history at San Francisco State for about a dozen years; I’ve also taught history courses on the US Constitution, revolution, diplomacy, and democracy. But whatever the specific subject, my goal is to get students to engage their critical thinking and help them make sense of where we are by understanding how we got here.
A colleague and I launched the History for the 21st Century project which just before the pandemic. Our goal was to rethink how world history is taught at the college level. We use focused historical modules built around individuals and specific moments. Those stories become vehicles for teaching students how to think critically, how to work with primary sources, and how to interpret evidence. We now have dozens of modules in use at colleges around the country. I also write a weekly blog on history, law, and politics, called Condemned to Repeat It on my website.