First movers of globalisation: 10 people who made the world smaller

A thought-provoking even if debatable analysis of the story of globalisation

From Silk to Silicon
The Story of GlobaliZation Through Ten Extraordinary Lives
Author: Jeffrey E Garten
Publisher: Tranquebar Press
Pages: 434
Price: Rs 699

 
Jeffrey E Garten makes it clear at the outset that his is not just another book on globalisation — it looks at the phenomenon “through the lens of a small number of people whose heroic deeds gave it a gigantic boost.” Other authors, he says, have looked at trade, international industries and specific events such as financial meltdowns; he has chosen to focus on “ten people who made the world smaller and more interconnected”, and whose achievements continue to shape our world today.

 
They are: Genghis Khan (the Mongol empire builder who ensured that there were no trade barriers along the Silk Road between China and the Mediterranean, inaugurating the “first golden age” of globalisation); Prince Henry of Portugal (who set in motion the Age of Exploration — the European effort to colonise Africa, Asia and the Americas); Robert Clive (who annexed vast areas of India for the British Empire and transformed the East India Company into a territorial power that became synonymous with Britain’s global interests); Mayer Amschel Rothschild (who founded the most powerful bank in the world and ushered in global banking); Cyrus Field (who wired the Atlantic Ocean in the 1860s, enabling real-time communication between the US and Europe); John D Rockefeller (who built the US oil industry and launched global philanthropy); Jean Monnet (the French diplomat whose efforts paved the way for the formation of what eventually became the European Union); Margaret Thatcher (who revived free markets in Britain, setting an example for other countries); Andrew Grove (the visionary CEO of Intel, whose microprocessors powered the computer revolution and transformed global society); and Deng Xiaoping (whose economic reforms made possible China’s transformation into an influential global player).

 
Garten — a former dean of the Yale School of Management and former managing director of the Blackstone Group — picked his protagonists on the basis of certain criteria. They were first movers who each ushered in a critical phase of globalisation — exploration, colonisation, global finance, global communication, energy, supranationalism, and so on. They were also “doers” and not just thinkers, which is why figures such as Karl Marx and Adam Smith have been excluded.
 
They also shared several common traits that explain their success. They focused relentlessly on a single big idea to the exclusion of all else, which enabled them to bounce back from setbacks — Clive on conquering more territory for Britain; Monnet on reducing the barriers to cooperation between sovereign countries in Europe; and Grove “on making semiconductors smaller, faster and cheaper”. They were also bold risk-takers; Monnet, Thatcher and Deng for example gambled that their revolutionary ideas would not backfire and send them into political oblivion.

 
Garten emphasises that while his protagonists helped create globalisation, circumstances equally created them. Each capitalised on fundamental trends that were already in motion, seizing opportunities that circumstances offered. In Britain, Labour’s policies had failed by the late 1970s and the public was eager for change, but it was Thatcher alone among the Tories who seized the moment. Grove arrived at Intel just as the high-tech revolution in the US was gaining force in Silicon Valley. And the economic reforms of Deng, who, like Thatcher, seized the moment, would not have succeeded so spectacularly if Mao Zedong’s policies had not decimated the Chinese economy.

 
Garten realised during his research that contrary to his original assumption, his characters were accidental globalists, without grand strategies envisioning major transformations. They were merely propelled by “the urge to acquire power, or fortune, or fame” and to solve an immediate problem. (The one exception, he writes, is Monnet, who had envisioned a “United Europe”.) They also had a dark side to them — Genghis Khan’s brutality, Clive’s duplicity, Prince Henry’s pivotal role in expanding the slave trade, Rockefeller’s and Grove’s “anything goes” competitiveness, Thatcher’s callousness, and Deng’s role in crushing the Chinese student rebellion at Tiananmen Square in 1989.

 
What of the future? Garten says globalisation may appear to be in retreat, since global GDP growth has been much slower over the past decade as compared to the preceding three decades, and as also indicated by the growth of stridently nationalist political parties in UK, France, Spain, the Netherlands and Germany that want to “reclaim national control”. He argues however that the progress of globalisation has been marked by periods of advance and periods of retreat, and given the direction of history, globalisation will regain momentum. But a deeper discussion of the challenges posed by Brexit, the Donald Trump phenomenon and nativist sentiment in Europe is not to be found in From Silk to Silicon.

 
The question then is whether the current era is too complex — with checks and balances that were absent earlier — to permit the emergence of transformational leaders like Field, Rothschild, Grove and the others. Garten offers two arguments why, decades from now, we will still be able to point to distinct people as the architects of globalisation. First, every age in history looks complex and intimidating to those living in it (India in Clive’s time, China’s grinding poverty in the 1970s); yet his own protagonists pushed ahead successfully. Second, the global breakthroughs made by leaders like Field, Rothschild and Grove have given current and future leaders much more powerful tools to shape globalisation. Perhaps Emmanuel Macron’s defeat of Marine Le Pen in the French presidential election offers a small sliver of hope.

 
It is possible to quarrel with Garten’s choice of personalities; ruthless conquerors like Genghis Khan and Clive sit uneasily with genuine globalisers like Field, Rothschild, Monnet and Deng. Picking only ten people also meant he had to exclude other deserving candidates, such as Johannes Gutenberg, inventor of mechanical type printing; or Norman Borlaug, father of the green revolution; or John Maynard Keynes, a chief architect of the World Bank and the International Fund. Nevertheless, Garten has synthesised large amounts of information to tell ten fascinating stories. From Silk to Silicon is both superbly researched and riveting, the narrative peppered with anecdotes from the lives of his characters.