Introduction

Abstract

International audienceGlobalization, as a process of accelerated commercial exchanges between different types of universality, is a long-term phenomenon that is often seen as part of the 15th century’s Age of Discovery (Grataloup, 2006; Boucheron, 2009). This was the period when ‘world economies’ first began to be organized structurally through trade which led to the launch of international commerce as a form of capitalism with the Mediterranean as one of the main marketplaces (Braudel, 1993a, 1993b). In the 19th century, colonization and new industrial revolutions provided the bases for greater and more concentrated movements of people and goods (Wallerstein, 2006)