The book describes the process of globalization through human webs, offering a novel way to consider how modern political, economic, cultural, and environmental dynamics have emerged. In the Introduction, the authors establish globalization as a major theme: “Today, although people experience it in vastly different ways, everyone lives inside a single global web, a unitary maelstrom of cooperation and competition” (5). This suggests that globalization has varying impacts across the human community, conferring greater power and advantages to some while subjugating others to weaker and subservient positions. The expansion and integration of webs show how these inequalities take shape.

In Part 3, the text notes that “trading and raiding connected” (49) pastoral, agricultural, and urban peoples to one another in western Eurasia, necessitating the professionalization of soldiers to protect cities from mobile pastoralists, who could easily assemble raiding parties. This created a minority of city folks and pastoralists who had much greater power than the agricultural majority, demonstrating the origins of a small but powerful elite. Moreover, the majority’s survival became dependent on their subordination to the powerful urban elite. This arrangement has characterized human societies across subsequent millennia.

Globalization constitutes replication of the pattern on the largest scale, as shown in parts 6-8.