The first wave of globalization, although it wasn’t called as such, happened in the late 19th and early 20th century. At that time, technological advances in transportation via steamships and railways made it so much easier to move people and commodities across the continents, leading to a surge in cross-border trade.
The share of world trade in global GDP rose from 6 percent in 1800 to 14 percent in 1914. Foreign direct investments accounted for a full half of total investments in Britain in the early 1900s, whereas the same ratio was only 6 percent for the United States, Germany and Japan in the early 2000s.
By this measure, these economies were much less globalized than Britain was a century before. Two world wars ended that first wave, and led to economic stagnation.
The postwar recovery from 1945 onward brought about the second wave, this time aided by wide application of the internal combustion engine in land, sea and particularly air transport, especially with the development of jet engines.
World trade saw a renewed surge, and nations worked toward further liberalizing trade and established a coordinated global financial system.
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