# Chapter 1: What is 'international awareness'?

Gongratulations, You have just reached the webpage for the subject 'International Awareness' (IA). Here you can find both practical infromation and the lesson material needed for this course. But before we start, you might have been wondering what ínternational awareness is acctually is all about?

International awareness is a subject that studies how people from all over the world influence each other. This subject tries to enhance our standing of the planet and its population by combining geographical, historical and economical information, To fully understand the impact of global phenomena, we need to study the planet as a whole. Consequently, international awareness focusses on globalization in its many different forms.

Globalization is an important and influential process for (almost) every human being on this planet. Globalization is not something completely new. Ancient Greeks already knew the earth was round, the Dutch had their ‘golden age’ due to intercontinental trade and even our modern internet has been around since 1993.

Nevertheless, never in human history has humanity been so interconnected as in the 21st century. The world has become’ globalized’ in many different ways. But what does this tricky concept actually mean? First, we will need to get our definitions straight by doing the excerises below.

TIP: Did you know that you can find definitions of words using Google?