Synopsis Globalisation as part of the everyday experience of life has been part of human history since the 16th century, when the marketplace that was the Netherlands stretched to the Spice Islands of what we now call Southeast Asia. Democracy is a form of anti-fundamentalism; its wisdom and openness resist monolithic certitudes. In times of rapid and hurtful change, growing inequality and the erosion of national authority by global powers, the appeal of fundamentalist doctrines demands a steady refusal not to reply in kind. Global terrorism depends on the success of globalisation. In fact one may very conceive of global terrorism as a facet of the global culture resulting from globalisation.