PRELIMINARY THOUGHTS ON HISTORY, GLOBALIZATION, AND GLOBALITY
             During reviews of the project application by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, we were asked how the outcomes would differ from results achieved by funding the specific investigations - each of our projects - as standard grants. How would we achieve collaborative results? What would be gained from collaborative effort? What does society gain?
             Initial collaborative effort produced excellent answers or we would not be here. Now we have to fulfil promises. That is a serious responsibility. In one response to questions about whether the whole would exceed the sum of the parts, we mentioned that the project fashioned a community of scholars; we would inform one another. Therefore, everyone was urged to read each team member's proposed research program, and a number of readings as well. It is humbling to read the projects. Due to their content, what I proposed 36 and even 3 months ago has changed. An explanation should promote some later discussion about the themes that could unite chapters in the volume on globalization in history.
             Until a few months ago I had been writing about The Great Land Rush and the Making of the Modern World, 1650-1900, a book about the development of regimes of property rights that accompanied European colonization. I will lapse into a summary of findings, not to suggest that these specifics should be core ideas for the historical dimensions of the project, but as a personal way of forming hypotheses. My initial attitude as a historian-sceptic was to regard globalization, by whatever definition, as certain to have old foundations. I found too that discussions about the Westphalian world and the new world of globalization baffling, because historians are unaccustomed to thinking in terms of rude breaks and are suspicious of labels in any event. I share Tim Brook's n1 view about the deep roots of globalization, whether it is defi...