Global Studies: A Historical and Contemporary Reader is a text focused on an emergent field concerned with understating both the historical and contemporary phenomenon of globalization in all its aspects. Although global phenomena have been studied for many decades if not centuries, global studies as a field was founded in Asian, European, and American universities in the 1990's and expanded exponentially after the turn of the 21st century. This text seeks to introduce students to come of the ways that the world has been woven into a system of interrelated, but far from completely integrated, processes, interactions, and transformations since long before the beginning of the Common Era. The readings reflect patterns of transmission, dispersion, and exchange that reveal how the world has operated- in some cases for thousands of years.