Politics, rather than technology, drives globalization

The new steam technologies of the Industrial Revolution would never have had the effect that they did if they had not operated within the context of a stable geopolitical system within which the Royal Navy guaranteed the freedom of the seas for all; within which wars between the major European powers were relatively rare; and within which those same European powers used their military superiority to impose more or less open trade on most of Africa and Asia. With the outbreak of World War I, that geopolitical system was destroyed, and 19th century globalisation with it, despite the fact that technological progress continued unabated during the interwar period.