The standard definition of" globalism," which first entered English usage in 1943, emphasizes the term's long history in the language and methodologies of economics and politics. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, global ism is" The belief, theory, or practice of adopting or pursuing a political course, economic system, etc., based on global rather than national principles; an outlook that reflects an awareness of global scale, issues, or implications; spec, the fact or process of large businesses, organizations, etc., operating and having an influ ence on a worldwide scale, globalization"{OED, sv" globalism"). The ongoing contemporary relevance of the concept is ensured by the ever-growing intercon nectedness of cultures through international trade, diplomacy, tourism, population migration, and war. These current phenomena have in turn directed the perspective that scholars today cast upon the medieval past. It must be acknowledged from the outset that the medieval world did not witness a truly global network, with all continents of the earth linked through economic, political, and cultural relations. Yet globalism need not require a total system; it can instead be productively understood as relative, manifesting in" thick" or" thin" and complete or partial degrees. 1 Janet Abu-Lughod, for instance, argues that the thirteenth century saw the emergence of eight overlap ping spheres of commercial interaction (Fig. 1), which together represent an Afro-Eurasian economic network as sophisticated and extensive as that of the early modern era. 2 Although limited in their global scope, these interconnected zones bespeak a" world system" that demands the consideration of local histo ries in relation to larger patterns of exchange. According to her model, individ ual regions can be fully understood only through consideration of their broader interactions. Unlike nineteenth-century" universal" history (which sought com prehensive patterns across time and space) and twentieth-century" world" his tory (which focused on local histories in comparative terms, with only secondary attention paid to connections among regions), global history of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century foregrounds linkages among cultures. 3 As aptly summarized by the eminent historian of the Mediterranean, Fernand Braudel," Globalism [la globalité] is not the pretension to write a total history of the

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