Bound Together by Nayan Chanda

Bound Together written by Nayan Chanda has a book launch at the Asia Society on May 9th. Below is an event at the Yale library that seems very interesting. Nayan is one of the most intelligent, hardworking, and considerate people I know, so go out and buy his book. I am going to be reading it while in India, uninterrupted, hopefully while my baby sleeps.

Yale Library talk and exhibit to address issue of Globalization

As part of its “Global Faces of the Yale Library” season of events, a special talk on Globalization will be held to mark the opening of a new Library exhibit and the launch of a new book by Nayan Chanda.

Nayan Chanda is director of publications for the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, and Editor of YaleGlobal Online. He is former editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review and the Asian Wall Street Journal Weekly.

His talk, entitled "A World Connected: How Traders, Preachers, Warriors and Adventurers Shaped Globalization", will start at 2pm in the Sterling Memorial Library Lecture Hall on Friday May 4th. It will outline how the incessant crossing of borders by different groups of humans seeking profit and adventure to live a more fulfilling life and achieve political ambition, have helped to create the interconnected and interdependent world we live in today. Much of the material will be drawn from his new book, “Bound Together: How Traders, Preachers, Adventurers and Warriors Shaped Globalization” in which he traces how traders, preachers, warriors, and adventurers have reshaped the world and reconnected us throughout history, while also offering a provocative discussion of what globalization means for the future.

The talk will also mark the opening of a new Library exhibit “The History of Globalization: Artifacts and Documentation from Yale's Collections” and will refer to items in the exhibit as evidence of the process of globalization. Since it first came on the scene in the 1960s, the word “globalization” has engendered impassioned debate. Sometimes lost in the controversy is the fact that globalization is actually describing a process that has ancient origins. In this exhibit, items from Yale’s extensive collections are used to illustrate aspects of the historical process of globalization. Drawing on Nayan Chanda’s book, the exhibit highlights four categories of agents who have, throughout history, promoted interconnectedness: traders, preachers, adventurers and warriors. How did the human community, whose African ancestors spread all over the world, reconnect? What motivated the interactions between ancient people