ned as various exchanges across continents and seas (crossing the seams of Pangaea, to use Alfred Crosby's term for the trans-continental movement of biota) or even as the consciousness as the world as a unitary place, a concept proposed by Jan Aart Scholte (2000). Tim Brook and others involved in this project also propose that globalization's forms have spread unevenly.
             Distant roots and uneven development seem perspectives that could appeal to those historians who take the idea of globalization seriously. But does globalization amount to a new theory or an age of transnational business and politics? Perhaps, but I don't think historians are comfortable with a segmented model of the pre-Westphalian, post-Westphalian, and Globalized world; they surely find it odd. I opt for the idea that globalization is a phenomenon with roots, uneven distribution, but with impetus in a grooved course. Scholte's (2000) review of definitions of globalization is helpful for historians, and he embraces historical evidence when describing what is new about globalization.
             "What is new about globalization?" he asks. He answers that what is new is the supraterritoriality of many transactions and the pervasiveness of the idea of the world as unitary place. This is globality. His concepts have merit. They propose a discrete phenomenon, whereas, he argues, globalization defined by trade or cultural exchanges can be studied without recourse to a new word. I find especially interesting the attempt to define globalization in terms of a growing consciousness of the world as a unitary place. World systems are nothing new to historical writing. Janet Abu-Lughod's conclusion from her book Before European Hegemony (1989) describes the open world system in the Indian Ocean prior to the appearance of the Portuguese, and she speculates on the impermanence of world systems and associates instability with centres of power, whether diffuse as they were in the Indian Oce...