This chapter discusses the changing global context and the emergence of the modern world system. It describes how the world system evolved through stages, from early minisystems and empires to the core-periphery structure that developed during the Industrial Revolution. Technological innovations in transportation and communication intensified economic integration and globalization. Core regions like Europe and North America industrialized first and came to dominate semi-peripheral and peripheral regions, influencing patterns of trade, imperialism, and development around the world. The chapter outlines how the world system and global inequalities have continued to change over time due to shifting technologies and economic relationships.

1. Human Geography: Places
and Regions in Global
Context, 5e
Chapter 2: The Changing Global Context
Paul L. Knox & Sallie A. Marston
PowerPoint Author: Keith M. Bell

2. Overview
This chapter further describes the process of globalization and introduces the
idea of a world-system in which all countries participate. This world-system is
divided into core, semiperipheral, and peripheral regions based on each
region’s place within the world-system. The chapter begins by looking at the
state of the world before 1500, when the world-system did not yet exist. The
middle part of the chapter explains how the world-system came into being,
especially due to innovations in industrial production and in transportation and
communications technology. The final part of the chapter describes the current
situation and proposes a division of the world’s population into Fast and Slow
worlds, based on contrasting lifestyles and levels of living.
Students should be aware of the existence of the world-system and the
function of its core, semiperipheral, and peripheral components. The students
should understand how the world system came into being, and why Europe
was the initial core region, which later came to include the United States and
Japan. Students should further realize that life in the United States—a core
region—is very different from life in semiperipheral and peripheral countries.

3. Chapter Objectives
• The objectives of this chapter are to
illustrate:
– Geographic expansion, integration, and
change
– Industrialization and geographic change
– Forces that organize the periphery
– The fast world and the slow world

4. Chapter Outline
• The Premodern World (p. 42)
– Hearth areas
– Growth of early empires
– Early geographic knowledge
– Geography of the Premodern
world
• Mapping a New World
Geography (p. 48)
– Cartography and exploration
– Core, semiperiphery, and
periphery
– Beginnings of modern geography
– Industrialization in core regions
– Internal development in core
regions
– International division of labor
– Imperialism
– The Third World and
neocolonialism
• Contemporary Globalization (p.
68)
– Causes and consequences of
globalization
– Outcomes of globalization
– Jihad vs. McWorld
– Opposition to globalization
• Conclusion (p. 78)

5. Geography Matters
• 2.1 Geography Matters—Early Geographic Knowledge (p. 46)
– Ancient Greek and Roman development of geographical knowledge
• 2.2 Geography Matters—Geography and Exploration (p. 50)
– The European Age of Discovery and its global impacts
• 2.3 Geography Matters—The Foundations of Modern
Geography (p. 54)
– Immanuel Kant, Alexander von Humboldt, Karl Ritter, Friedrich Ratzel,
and other founders of modern geography
• 2.4 Geography Matters—World Leadership Cycles (p. 60)
– The historical rise of Portuguese, Dutch, British, and American global
hegemony
• 2.5 Geography Matters—Commodity Chains (p. 70)
– How commodity production is organized, especially in the global
garment industry

6. The Changing Global Context
The modern world-system has evolved through
several distinctive stages.
The new technologies of the Industrial
Revolution created a new global economic
system.
Places and regions are part of a world-system
that has been created by the processes of
private economic competition and political
competition.
The world-system is highly structured and is
characterized by three tiers: core, semi-
peripheral, and peripheral regions.
The growth of the core regions could take place
only with the foodstuffs, raw materials, and
markets provided by colonization of the
periphery.
Successive technological innovations have
transformed regional geographies.
Globalization has intensified the differences
between the core and the periphery, creating a
digital divide.

7. Hearth Areas: Old and New Worlds
• The essential foundation for an
informed human geography is an
ability to understand that places
and regions constantly change:
all geography is historical
geography.
• Systematically differentiated
human geographies began with
minisystems, or societies with
a single cultural base and a
reciprocal social economy.
• Carl O. Sauer noted that
agricultural breakthroughs could
only occur in certain
geographical settings: plentiful
natural food supplies, diversified
terrain, and rich/moist soils.

8. Minisystems
• A transition to food-producing
minisystems had several
implications for the long-term
evolution of the world’s
geographies:
– It allowed much higher
population densities.
– It brought about a change in
social organization.
– It allowed some specialization
in non-agricultural crafts.
– Specialization led to the
beginnings of barter and trade
between communities,
sometimes over substantial
distances.

9. The Growth of
Early Empires
A world-empire is a group of
minisystems that have been
absorbed into a common
political system while retaining
their fundamental cultural
differences.
Urbanization: Towns and cities
became essential as centers of
administration, military
garrisons, and as theological
centers for ruling classes.
Greek colonies and the
extent of the Roman
Empire
Colonization: The physical
settlement in a new territory of
people from a colonizing state;
an indirect consequence of the
operation of the law of
diminishing returns.

10. Early Geographic Knowledge
• Greek scholars developed the idea
that places embody fundamental
relationships between people and the
natural environment, and that the
study of geography provides the best
way of addressing the
interdependencies between places
and between people and nature.
– Mathematics & Astronomy
– Philosophy & Humans
– Regional Approach
• The Romans were less interested than
the Greeks in the scholastic and
philosophical aspects of geography,
though they did appreciate
geographical knowledge as an aid to
conquest, colonization, and political
control.

11. The Geography of the Pre-modern World
• The generalized framework of
human geographies in the Old
World as they existed around
A.D. 1400 are characteristically
important:
– Harsher environments in
continental interiors were still
characterized by isolated,
subsistence-level, kin-ordered
hunting-and-gathering
minisystems.
– The dry belt of steppes and
desert margins was a
continuous zone of kin-
ordered pastoral minisystems.
– The hearths of sedentary
agricultural production
extended in a discontinuous
arc from Morocco to China,
with two main outliers.

12. The Silk Road
The dominant centers of global civilization were China, northern India (both
of them hydraulic variants of world-empires), and the Ottoman Empire of
the eastern Mediterranean. They were all linked by the Silk Road, a series
of overland trade routes between China and Mediterranean Europe.

13. The European Age of Discovery
Cartography is the name given to the system of
practical and theoretical knowledge about making
distinctive visual representations of Earth’s surface in
the form of maps.

14. The Foundations of Modern
Geography
• Kant, von Humboldt, Ritter, and
Ratzel were German scholars
who wanted to move geography
away from straightforward
descriptions of Earth.
• They wanted explanations and
generalizations about the
relationships of different
phenomena within and among
particular places.
• Kant saw human activities heavily
influenced by physical geography.
• Von Humboldt emphasized the
mutual causation among species
and their physical environment.
• Ethnocentrism and Masculinism
• Environmental determinism

15. Technology and Economic
Development
The Industrial Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century was driven
by a technology system based on water power and steam engines,
cotton textiles, ironworking, river transportation systems, and canals.
Each new technology system opens new geographic frontiers and
rewrites the geography of economic development, shifting the balance of
advantages between regions.

16. Europe: Three
Waves of
Industrialization
• 1790–1850: based on the
initial cluster of industrial
technologies (steam engines,
cotton textiles, and
ironworking); was very
localized
• 1858–1870: involved the
diffusion of industrialization to
most of the rest of Britain and
to parts of northwest Europe,
particularly the coalfields of
northern France, Belgium,
and Germany
• 1870–1914: a further
industrialization of the
geography of Europe as yet
another cluster of
technologies imposed
different needs and created
new opportunities

17. New World System: Core-Periphery
• Capitalism truly became a global system with the new
production and transportation technologies of the
Industrial Revolution.
• New transportation technologies triggered successive
phases of geographic expansion, allowing for internal
development as well as for external colonization and
imperialism.
– Core Regions: dominate trade, control the most advanced
technologies, and have high levels of productivity within
diversified economies
– Peripheral Regions: dependent and disadvantageous
trading relationships by primitive or obsolescent
technologies; undeveloped or narrowly specialized
economies with low levels of productivity
– Semiperipheral Regions: able to exploit peripheral regions
but are themselves exploited and dominated by core

18. The World-System: 1800

19. The World System: 1900

20. The World System: 2000
Many places around the globe are connected like
never before, leading to a backlash against
globalization or “Americanization” (e.g., Jihad vs.
McWorld).

21. The Manufacturing Belt of the United
States
The cities of this region, already thriving industrial centers that were
well connected through the early railroad system, were ideally
placed to take advantage of a series of crucial shifts: telegraph
system, manufacturing technologies, railroad system. Specialization
required an increase in commodity flows.

22. Major Steamship Routes, in
1920
The shipping routes reflect (1) the transatlantic trade between the bipolar
core regions of the world-system at the time, and (2) the colonial and imperial
relations between the world’s core economies and the periphery.

23. International Telegraph Network, in
1900
For Britain, submarine telegraph cables were the nervous system of its
empire. This enabled businesses to monitor and coordinate supply and
demand across vast distances on an hourly basis.

24. International
Division of Labor
• The fundamental logic behind
all colonization was economic.
– Need for extended arena of trade.
– Need for an arena supplying
foodstuffs and raw materials in
return for industrial goods of the
core.
• The outcome was an
international division of labor:
– where an established demand
existed in the industrial core.
– where colonies had a comparative
advantage in specializations that
did not duplicate or compete with
the domestic suppliers within core
countries.

25. The British Empire, late 1800s
Imperialism: The core countries engaged in preemptive geographic
expansion in order to protect their established interests and to limit the
opportunities of others.

26. Commodity Chains
and Containerization
Commodity chains: producer-driven,
consumer-driven, and marketing
driven
Containerization revolutionized long-
distance transport of goods; wider
geographical scope and faster pace

27. Communication Flows and
24-Hour Trading
In 2008, the fifth of the world’s population living in the highest-income
countries had 75 percent of world income, 83 percent of world export
market, and 76 percent of world telephone lines. The GDP of the 41
Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (567 million people) is less than the
wealth of the world’s seven richest individuals combined. They are
disaffected and disconnected. Is there spatial justice?

28. Contemporary Globalization
• Cultural anthropologist Arjun Appadurai described five
kinds of cultural flows that contribute to global cultures:
– Ethnoscapes: produced by flows of people including tourists,
immigrants, refugees, exiles, and guest workers
– Technoscapes: resulting from the diffusion of goods,
technologies, and architectural styles
– Finanscapes: produced by rapid flows of money in currency
markets and stock exchanges
– Mediascapes: images of the world produced by news agencies,
magazines, television, and film
– Ideoscapes: resulting from the diffusion of ideas and ideologies,
concepts of human rights, democracy, welfare, and so on

29. Internal Development of the Core
Regions
The canal systems that opened up the interiors of Europe and
North America in the eighteenth century were initially dependant
on horse power. This photograph shows part of the Burgundy
canal in France.

30. World Leadership Cycles: Hegemony
• The modern world-system has
so far experienced five full
leadership cycles.
• Portuguese dominance:
Atlantic exploration, trade, and
plunder
• Dutch dominance: fishing and
shipping industries, Dutch
West India Company
• British dominance: overseas
trade and colonization, strong
navy, Nelson at Trafalgar,
Wellington at Waterloo
• United States dominance:
economically dominant by
1920, hegemony in 1945,
credit crisis in 2008 threatens
U.S. leadership status

31. World Leadership Cycles: The United
States
The United States was economically dominant within the world-
system by 1920 but did not achieve hegemonic power because of
a failure of political will, choosing “splendid isolation”. All
hegemonic powers must protect the economic foundations of their
power, as represented by this photograph of U.S. air superiority in
the Gulf War.

32. Antiglobalization
Demonstrations
Bern, Switzerland French farmers protest
Globalization often leads to the downward convergence of wages and
environmental standards, an undermining of democratic governance, and a
general recoding of nearly all aspects of life to the language and logic of
global markets.

33. End of Chapter 2

34. Discussion Topics and Lecture
Themes
• The world-system did not always exist. Why did it
develop, and why did Europe emerge as the core of
the world-system?
– The world-system began in the 1400s, when Europeans
started exploring and settling beyond their home regions.
European expansion brought about the exchange of ideas,
technologies, and resources between regions that previously
had little to do with each other. Europe emerged as the core of
the world-system because of its economic system of
capitalism, its rapidly growing population, and its technological
innovations. European expansion abroad and the exploitation
of natural resources outside Europe were critical factors in
Europe’s emergence as a core region. See pages 48–64 in
the textbook for more information.

35. Discussion Topics and Lecture
Themes
• Ask the students to give examples of core,
semiperipheral, and peripheral states. Are
there some countries that do not clearly fit in a
single category?
– Examples of core states would include the United
States, Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand,
and most of western and central Europe. Examples
of semiperipheral states include Mexico, Brazil,
India, and Taiwan. Examples of peripheral states
include Ethiopia, Nepal, Bolivia, and Guatemala,
among many others. Ambiguous examples might
include Singapore and Korea (core–semiperipheral)
and Iran and Vietnam (semiperipheral–peripheral),
but these distinctions are partly a matter of opinion.

36. Discussion Topics and Lecture
Themes
• Have the students compare two countries, one in the
core and one in the periphery (for example,
Switzerland and Bolivia). Why is one of these countries
richer and more economically developed than the
other? How does the world-system model help to
explain these differences?
– World-systems theory argues that it is the relationship
between states that helps establish their place in the core–
semiperiphery–periphery hierarchy. Much of the difference
derives from the effectiveness of a state in insuring the
international competitiveness of its products. Switzerland, for
example, produces high-value goods—such as watches—and
important services—such as banking—while Bolivia relies on
low-value exports that are not processed locally—such things
as tin ore and fruit.

37. Discussion Topics and Lecture
Themes
• Discuss the differences and similarities among
colonialism, imperialism, and neo-colonialism.
– All are similar in that they are the means of
domination by one state over another. Colonialism
refers to the establishment and maintenance of
political and legal domination, whereas
neocolonialism is an indirect means whereby core
states use political and economic strategies to wield
their influence. Imperialism is largely a competitive
form of colonialism that resulted in a scramble for
territory as (mainly) European powers attempted to
build colonial empires.

38. Discussion Topics and Lecture
Themes
• Have the students describe the principal
means of transportation and communication in
the local region. When were these systems
first introduced? What existed before them?
What impacts did changes in transportation
and communications technology have on the
local area?
– Data on local transportation and communication
networks can be obtained from maps as well as
from the companies and agencies that operate
these networks.

39. Discussion Topics and Lecture
Themes
• Have the students give examples of each of
the four factors (described on pages 72–74 of
the textbook) that have led to globalization in
the past twenty-five years. What evidence for
these factors exists in the local area?
– The four factors are (1) a new international division
of labor, (2) an internationalization of finance, (3) a
new technology system, and (4) a homogenization
of international consumer markets. See pages 72–
74 in the textbook for more information.

40. Discussion Topics and Lecture
Themes
• Why does it no longer seem appropriate to speak of
the First, Second, and Third Worlds? What advantages
does a division into Fast and Slow worlds offer? Ask
the students to describe their own experiences (if they
have had them) in traveling between these worlds.
– Changes stemming from the four factors (see Question 6,
above) have led to a Fast World, largely composed of the core
regions, where people are involved, as producers and
consumers, in transnational industry, modern
telecommunications, materialistic consumption, and
international news and entertainment. The Slow World refers
to people, regions, and places where these things are limited.
The breakup of the Soviet Union and the collapse of
international communism generally have also made
meaningless the concept of a Second World.

41. Discussion Topics and Lecture
Themes
• What minisystems once existed in the
local area? What happened to them?
– Consult ethnographies of the indigenous
population. The local museum or library may
also hold information on the area’s original
minisystems.

42. Discussion Topics and Lecture
Themes
• The Geography Matters 2.5 boxed text discusses the nature and
meaning of commodity chains. Have the students gather data
about the three kinds of commodity chains and then sketch out
the “links.”
– The three kinds of commodity chains are 1) producer-driven, in which
large, often transnational, corporations coordinate production
networks; 2) consumer-driven, where large retailers, brand-name
merchandisers, and trading companies influence decentralized
production networks in a variety of exporting countries, often in the
periphery; and 3) marketing-driven, which involves the production of
inexpensive consumer goods that are global commodities and carry
global brands yet are often manufactured in the periphery and
semiperiphery for consumption in those regions.
– The Internet will provide a starting point for gathering this data, and
you might also want to contact the companies (such as Wal-Mart)
directly.

43. Discussion Topics and Lecture
Themes
• Figure 2.22 shows how
North America is a key
node in global telephonic
communications flow,
What accounts for the
distribution shown in the
figure?
– The wealth of North
America and its pioneering
of much communications
technology are in part
responsible for this
position.