The First Globalization Debate: Crusoe vs. Gulliver

Two of the earliest novels in English, Robinson Crusoe (1719) by Daniel Defoe and Gulliver’s Travels (1726) by Jonathan Swift, are widely perceived as an entertaining adventure story and a pioneering work of science fiction. Viewed by modern economists, however, they appear as expressions of opposing positions on the desirability of integration within a world economy. Crusoe demonstrated the gains from trade and colonization and the attendant social and political benefits. By contrast, Swift warned of complex entanglements that would arise from globalization, especially with foreign leaders who operated from theory and models rather than common sense.