The Making of a Global World Class 10 Notes and Questions

These Class 10 notes on The Making of a Global World show how trade, migration and the movement of money tied together livelihoods, economies and societies across the world over thousands of years. You will go through the chapter in order, from silk routes to the Great Depression and Bretton Woods, and finish with important questions, model answers and common mistakes.

The pre-modern world and the silk routes

Globalisation is not new. Travellers, traders, priests and pilgrims crossed long distances for knowledge, opportunity, faith or safety, carrying goods, money, skills, ideas, inventions, and even germs.

• As early as 3000 BCE, coastal trade linked the Indus Valley civilisations with present-day West Asia.
• For more than a thousand years, cowries (seashells used as money) from the Maldives reached China and East Africa.

The silk routes, over land and by sea, linked Asia with Europe and northern Africa and thrived until the fifteenth century. They are named after the West-bound Chinese silk cargoes, but Chinese pottery, Indian textiles and spices also travelled them, while gold and silver flowed from Europe to Asia. Faith moved too: Christian missionaries, Muslim preachers and Buddhist monks used these routes, and Buddhism spread from eastern India in several directions.

Food, conquest and disease

Potatoes, groundnuts, maize, tomatoes, chillies and sweet potatoes were unknown in Europe and Asia until about five centuries ago. They came after Columbus's voyages connected Europe with the Americas, from Indigenous peoples of the Americas.

• The potato let Europe's poor eat better and live longer.
• But in Ireland, dependence on it was dangerous: in the mid-1840s disease destroyed the crop, and nearly 1,000,000 people died of starvation in the Great Potato Famine.
• Food histories are not always certain; for example, one suggestion is that Arab traders brought pasta to Sicily.

Spanish and Portuguese conquest of the Americas was not only about firepower. Diseases like smallpox devastated Indigenous communities that lacked immunity, weakening resistance. Until the 18th century, China and India were among the world's richest countries, but the centre of world trade moved west toward Europe. In the Americas, plantations worked by enslaved Africans grew cotton and sugar for European markets.

The nineteenth century: three flows

These flows were linked. Britain's demand for food led to land being cleared in America and Australia, which needed people and money for railways and ports. Between 1815 and 1914, nearly 50 million people emigrated from Europe to America and Australia. Britain's Corn Laws restricted corn imports to protect landowners; they were abolished because townspeople and industrialists disliked high food prices.

Technology: before the 1870s, live animals were shipped from America to Europe, and many died or lost weight. Refrigerated ships carried frozen meat instead, cutting costs and prices, so Europe's poor could eat meat, butter and eggs.

Colonialism, rinderpest and indentured labour

In Africa, people had plenty of land and livestock and little reason to work for wages. Colonial governments imposed heavy taxes and changed inheritance laws to push them into the labour market. Rinderpest, a cattle plague that arrived in the late 1880s with infected cattle from British Asia, killed 90% of Africa's cattle. Losing their livelihoods, Africans were forced into wage work, and colonisers gained control.

Indentured labour: bonded workers on contract, usually for five years, to pay off their passage. Most Indian migrants came from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Tamil Nadu, where cottage industries had declined and rents had risen. Agents often deceived them. Destinations included the Caribbean (Trinidad, Guyana, Surinam), Mauritius, Fiji, Ceylon, Malaya and Assam's tea gardens. In the Caribbean they created new cultural forms like Hosay (a carnival) and chutney music. Nationalist leaders forced abolition of the system in 1921.

India and Britain's trade surplus

India once exported fine cotton to Europe. Britain put tariffs on Indian cloth to protect its own industry, and India's share of cotton textile exports fell from 30% in 1800 to below 3% by the 1870s. India now exported raw materials like raw cotton and indigo.

Britain had a trade surplus with India (exports to India worth more than imports from it). It used this to settle deficits with other countries and to pay home charges, such as pensions of British officials and interest on India's external debt.

The First World War and the 1920s boom

The First World War (1914–18) was the first modern industrial war, fought with machine guns, tanks and chemical weapons. It caused 9 million deaths and 20 million injuries, mostly among working-age men. The US turned from international debtor to creditor, while Britain was left with heavy debts to the US. After the war, revived wheat production in Eastern Europe caused a glut and a price crash.

In the 1920s, Henry Ford introduced the assembly line in his Detroit plant: workers repeated one task at a pace set by a conveyor belt. The T-Model Ford was the first mass-produced car. In 1914 Ford doubled wages to $5 a day to keep workers, calling it his best cost-cutting decision. Cheaper goods, higher wages and hire purchase (credit) let workers buy cars, refrigerators and radios.

Great Depression, Bretton Woods and after

The Great Depression (1929 to mid-1930s) had two main causes: agricultural overproduction, which pushed prices down further as farmers grew more, and the withdrawal of US loans. In the US, thousands of banks failed and 110,000 companies collapsed between 1929 and 1932. In India, exports and imports halved; peasants suffered most because the colonial government would not reduce revenue demands.

In July 1944, the Bretton Woods conference set up the IMF (for external surpluses and deficits) and the World Bank (for post-war reconstruction), the Bretton Woods twins. Currencies were fixed to the US dollar, and the dollar to gold at $35 an ounce. The system collapsed in the 1970s as the dollar weakened, and floating exchange rates followed.

Newly independent countries formed the G-77 to demand a New International Economic Order (NIEO): control over their resources, fairer raw-material prices, more development help and better market access. MNCs moved production to low-wage Asian countries, transforming the economies of China, India and Brazil.

Remember this

• Three flows: trade, labour, capital.
• Rinderpest: 90% of Africa's cattle killed.
• Indian cotton export share: 30% (1800) to below 3% (1870s).
• Bretton Woods twins: IMF and World Bank.

Important questions with answers

1. What do cowries tell us about ancient trade? Cowries from the Maldives reached China and East Africa, showing long-distance trade networks over a thousand years ago.

2. Why were they called silk routes? After the West-bound Chinese silk cargoes, the most famous goods carried on them.

3. How did the potato affect Europe's poor? They ate better and lived longer, but Ireland's dependence led to famine when the crop failed in the 1840s.

4. How did refrigerated ships change European diets? Frozen meat replaced live animals, cutting costs, so meat became affordable for the poor.

5. How did rinderpest help colonisers in Africa? It destroyed the cattle that supported African livelihoods, forcing people into wage work for Europeans.

6. What is a trade surplus, and how did Britain use its surplus with India? Exports worth more than imports. Britain used it to balance deficits with other countries and pay home charges.

7. How did the First World War change the US economy? It turned the US from an international debtor into an international creditor.

8. Why were farmers hit hardest by the Depression? Farm prices fell more, and for longer, than industrial prices, and gluts left them unable to sell.

9. What did the G-77 mean by NIEO? A system giving them control of their natural resources, fairer prices, more development assistance and better market access.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Thinking globalisation began in the 20th century.
• Mixing up the IMF and the World Bank roles.
• Calling the US a debtor after the First World War. It became a creditor.

Want to revise these flows and events with practice questions? Study this chapter with Joy.