Abstract The increased visibility of globalization in the late twentieth and early twenty‐first centuries has led scholars in various disciplines from sociology to economics to discuss its impact, scope, and history. Literary criticism is no exception. This essay focuses on Victorian studies, in which the effort to historicize globalization has produced new readings of familiar texts. Recently, scholars of Victorian literature have been unearthing unlikely circuits of cross‐cultural interaction, tracing cosmopolitan sentiment, and shedding light on the ideology of the capitalist world system. This essay explores how formal analysis sheds light on the history of globalization.