Humans of the world unite
Abstract
The global is a utopian dream, a space projected as much from the failures of nation-state-based politics in the twentieth century, as from true visions of how the world might be better organised and governed. Or Rosenboim's The Emergence of Globalism is a panoramic account of visions of world order in the second half of the twentieth century, beginning with the outbreak of the Second World War and ending with the Korean crisis which began in 1950. This period, Rosenboim suggests, is marked by a great plurality of dreams of how the world could be united, and how the aggressive politics of nation-states could be replaced by new forms of world cooperation and federation. Most of these visions turn out to be flawed, inherently limited by forms of nationalist or Anglocentric bias, by legacies of past imperial dreams, or by the rivalry between great intellectuals with differing notions of what a united world would be—which racial, political or geographical hierarchy it would reflect, and whose intelligence and civilisation it should promote. The Emergence of Globalism is arguably the first study that examines the richness of these 1940s arguments for readers in political and intellectual history. In so doing the text also makes a significant contribution to studies of globalism.