The globalisation challenge : North-South divide and 'the people of Seattle'

Abstract

There was a rather precise pathway for this dissertation during its initial planning. It had to be a historical analysis of today's' globalisation with a magnified glass on the North-South divide and the noisy 'people of Seattle'. Convinced that the foundation structure of this New World Order was laid down since the wake of Renaissance Europe, today's globalisation had to be the Neo-Colonialism built on identical aspirations of earlier Renaissance conquests and the later imperialist age led by Britain. Obviously, I stand at a disadvantage to compare and contrast imperialism with modern-day globalisation since I am living in the latter age and cannot physically retreat into a later era to examine the two phases objectively. Globalisation is not an easy word nowadays even though many writers have tried to capture it into the word 'cage' for the rest of us. Globalisation seems to be borderless and without a leader/s although anti-globalisation protestors identify the leaders of the Western rich states, multinational corporations and international organizations such as WTO and World Bank as its driving force.