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Singapore, for instance, grew exponentially, and played a central role in the industrialisation of tin and rubber production in its maritime hinterland of Malaysia. New Orleans rose in importance with the Mississippi riverboat steamer, only to decline as railway connections to Baltimore and New York changed the dynamics of American trade once more. Trieste enjoyed a brief heyday as the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s main seaport, before collapsing abruptly into romantic obscurity after 1918.
例如，新加坡以指數形式增長，并在其海洋腹地馬來西亞的錫和橡膠生產工業化中發揮了核心作用。隨著密西西比河蒸汽輪船的出現，新奧爾良的重要性開始上升，但隨著與巴爾的摩和紐約的鐵路連接再次改變了美國貿易的動態，新奧爾良的重要性也隨之下降。的里雅斯特曾是奧匈帝國的主要海港，在1918年之后突然陷入莫名其妙的無名之中。
Mr Darwin takes globalisation to mean primarily “economic connectedness between different parts of the world”. That is a reasonable but limited definition, missing the ascent in the 19th century of ideologies such as nationalism and socialism that purported to explain social relations around the world. Rising sciences such as geology and palaeontology had a similarly broad scope. “Unlocking” the world, meanwhile, is a vivid metaphor, but it implies a smooth, even inevitable process. In reality the world’s doors were not just unlocked, but often kicked down. Mr Darwin knows this, and stresses the influence of geopolitics and imperialism, not just free trade as an abstract concept. But he might have depicted the footprints more graphically.
達爾文認為全球化主要是指“世界不同地區之間的經濟聯系”。這是一個合理但有局限性的定義，遺漏了19世紀提出的上升概念，即旨在解釋世界各地社會關系的民族主義和社會主義等意識形態。新興的科學，如地質學和古生物學也有同樣廣泛的研究范圍。“解鎖”世界，是一個生動的比喻的同時，也意味著一個平穩，甚至不可避免的過程。事實上，世界的大門不僅沒有上鎖，而且經常被踢開。達爾文知道這一點，他強調了地緣政治和帝國主義的影響，而不僅僅是把自由貿易作為一個抽象概念。但他可能更生動地描繪了通往全球化的足跡。
Still, his book is an enjoyable synthesis of a large body of scholarship. He closes by remarking that today’s globalisation is not simply a bigger, faster version of what happened in the steam age. As in the early modern period, Asia is once again the workshop of the world. He wonders if there is another parallel, however. In 1914 the European-dominated global economic system seemed irresistible. Then war intervened. Will a systemic crisis break the current cycle of globalisation, too?
不過，他的書生動有趣，綜合了大量的學術研究。他最后說，如今的全球化不僅僅是蒸汽時代全球化的一個規模更大、更快的版本。與近代早期一樣，亞洲再次成為世界工廠。然而，他想知道是否還有另一種類似的走向。1914年，歐洲主導的全球經濟體系似乎勢不可擋。然后因戰爭而受阻。那一場系統性的危機是否也會打破當前的全球化循環？
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