The Making of a Global World....Part I

THE SUMMARY OF THE TOPICS ON WHICH QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ARE GIVEN

The Pre-modern World
The Nineteenth Century (1815-1914)
The Inter-war Economy
Rebuilding a World Economy: The Post-war Era

INTRODUCTION

When we talk of ‘Globalisation’ we  refer to an economic system that has emerged since the last 50 years.But the making of the global world has a long history of trade, of migration, of people in search of work, the movement of capital, and much else.Therefore we need to understand the phases through which this world in which we live has emerged.

All through history, human societies have become steadily more interlinked. From ancient times, travellers, traders, priests and pilgrims travelled vast distances for knowledge, opportunity and spiritual fulfillment, or to escape persecution.They carried goods, money, values, skills, ideas, inventions, and even germs and diseases.

As early as 3000 BCE an active coastal trade linked the Indus valley civilizations with present-day West Asia. For more than a millennia,cowries (the Hindi cowdi or seashells, used as a form of currency) from the Maldives found their way to China and East Africa. The long-distance spread of disease-carrying germs may be traced as far back as the seventh century.

I. Answer the following questions:-

Q 1. What is Globalization?

1. Globalization refers to an economic system that has emerged since the last 50 years or so.
2. Under this system countries are inter dependent on each other in terms of trade, migration of people in search of work, the movement of capital, for raw materials and markets to sell their products.
3. Globalization have made human societies to become steadily more interlinked. 
4. From ancient times, travelers, traders, priests and pilgrims traveled vast distances for knowledge, opportunity and spiritual fulfillment, or to escape persecution. 
5. They carried goods, money, values, skills, ideas, inventions, and even germs and diseases.
6. The‘silk routes’has played an important role in interconnecting distant lands in the ancient times.

Q 2.'Food offers many examples of long-distance cultural exchange.'Justify the statement.

1. Food offers many examples of long-distance cultural exchange.
2. Traders and travellers introduced new crops to the lands they travelled. 
3. Even ‘ready’ foodstuff in distant parts of the world share common origins. For example spaghetti and noodles. It is believed that noodles travelled west from China to become spaghetti.
4. Arab traders took pasta to fifth-century Sicily, an island now in Italy.
5. Many of our common foods such as potatoes, soya, groundnuts, maize, tomatoes, chillies, sweet potatoes, and so on were not known to our ancestors until about five centuries ago. 
6. These foods were only introduced in Europe and Asia after Christopher Columbus accidentally discovered the vast continent that is known as the Americas.

Q 3. Explain how the global transfer of disease in the pre-modern world helped in the colonization of the Americas.

1. The Portuguese and Spanish conquest and colonization of America was under way by the mid-sixteenth century. 
2. European conquest was not a result of superior firepower or conventional military weapon. 
3. The most powerful weapon of the Spanish conquerors was the germs such as those of smallpox that they carried on their person. Because of their long isolation, America’s original inhabitants had no immunity against these diseases that came from Europe. Smallpox in particular proved a deadly killer. 
4. Once introduced, it spread deep into the continent, ahead even of any Europeans reaching there. 
5. It killed and decimated whole communities and paved the way for conquest and colonization of Americas.

Q 4. Explain the three types of movements or flows within international economic exchange. 

Economists identify three types of movement or ‘flows’ within
international economic exchanges. 

1. The first is the flow of trade which in the nineteenth century referred largely to trade in goods (e.g.,cloth or wheat). 
2. The second is the flow of labour – the migration of people in search of employment. 
3. The third is the movement of capital for short-term or long-term investments over long distances.

Q 5. What were the Corn Laws? Why they were abolished? What was its impact?

1. Population growth from the late eighteenth century had increased the demand for food grains in Britain. 
2. As urban centres expanded and industry grew, the demand for agricultural products went up, pushing up food grain prices. 
3. Under pressure from landed groups, the government restricted the import of corn. 
4. The laws that  allowed the government to do this were commonly known as the ‘Corn Laws’. 
5. Unhappy with high food prices, industrialists and urban dwellers forced the abolition of the Corn Laws.
6. Impact:-After the Corn Laws were scrapped, food could be imported into Britain more cheaply than it could be produced within the country.
7. British agriculture was unable to compete with imports. 
8. Vast areas of land were left uncultivated, and thousands of men and women were thrown out of work. 
9. They flocked to the cities or migrated overseas. 

Q 6. How did the silk routes link the world? Explain with examples.

1. The silk routes played an important role in pre-modern trade and cultural links between distant parts of the world. 
2. Historians have identified several silk routes, over land and by sea, knitting together vast regions of Asia, and linking Asia with Europe and northern Africa. 
3. They are known to have existed since before the Christian Era and thrived almost till the fifteenth century. 
4. Chinese pottery,textiles and spices from India and Southeast Asia also travelled the same route,
5. In return, precious metals – gold and silver – flowed from Europe to Asia.
6. Early Christian missionaries andMuslim preachers  travelled this route to Asia.
7. Buddhism emerged from eastern India and spread in several directions through intersecting points on the silk routes.

Q 7. Which region was called as Canal colonies?

1. In the areas of west Punjab the British Indian government built a network of irrigation canals to transform semi-desert wastes into fertile agricultural lands that could grow wheat and cotton for export. 
2. These were known as the Canal Colonies, as the areas irrigated by the new canals and  were settled by peasants from other parts of Punjab.

Q 8. Mention the positive changes brought by Colonization.

1. Colonization stimulated new investments and improvements in transport: faster railways, lighter wagons and larger ships helped move food more cheaply and quickly from faraway farms to final markets..
2. The railways, steamships, the telegraph, were important inventions which  transformed nineteenth-century world.
3. Technological advances were the result of larger social, political and economic factors that resulted due to Colonization.

Q 9. Explain briefly the impact of technology on food availability.

1. The trade in meat is a good example of the impact of technology on food availability.
2. Till the 1870's, animals were shipped live from America to Europe and then slaughtered but live animals took up a lot of ship space and many also died in voyage, fell ill, lost weight,or became unfit to eat. 
3. Meat was an expensive luxury beyond the reach of the European poor. 
4. High prices  kept demand and production down until the development of a new technology, namely,steam ships and refrigerated ships, which enabled the transportation of perishable foods over long distances.
5. Now animals were slaughtered for food at the starting point – in
6. America, Australia or New Zealand – and then transported to Europe as frozen meat. 
7. This reduced shipping costs and lowered meat prices in Europe. 
8. The poor in Europe could now consume a more varied diet. 
9. To the earlier monotony of bread and potatoes many, could now add meat,butter and eggs to their diet. 
10. Better living conditions promoted social peace within the country and support for imperialism abroad.
11. Railways helped in transporting food grains from different countries to Europe and made the food cheaper and ensured availability of food at affordable prices and resulted in a global agricultural economy.

Q 10. Why did Europeans flee to America in the 19th Century?

1. 50 million people emigrated from Europe to America and Australia in the nineteenth century in search of a better future.

Q 11.How did Europeans introduce the concept of Wage-earners in Africa?

1. Historically, Africa had abundant land and a relatively small population.
2. Land and livestock sustained African livelihoods and people rarely worked for a wage as there were few consumer goods that wages could buy. 
3. In the late nineteenth century, Europeans were attracted to Africa due to its vast resources of land and minerals. 
4. Europeans came to Africa hoping to establish plantations and mines to produce crops and minerals for export to Europe. 
5. But there was a shortage of labour as Africans were not willing to work for wages.
6. Employers used many methods to recruit and retain labour. 
7. Heavy taxes were imposed which could be paid only by working for wages on plantations and mines. 
8. Inheritance laws were changed so that peasants were displaced from land: only one member of a family was allowed to inherit land, as a result of which the others were pushed into the labour market. Mine workers were also confined in compounds and not allowed to move about freely.

Q 12. Describe the coming of Rinderpest to Africa.

1. Rinderpest arrived in Africa in the late 1880s. 
2. It was carried by infected cattle imported from British Asia to feed the Italian soldiers invading Eritrea in East Africa. 
3. Entering Africa in the east, Rinderpest moved west ‘like forest fire’, reaching Africa’s Atlantic coast in 1892 and it reached the Cape (Africa’s southernmost tip) five years later. 
4. Along the way Rinderpest killed 90 per cent of the cattle.
5. The loss of cattle destroyed African livelihoods. 
6. Planters, mine owners and colonial governments successfully monopolised and strengthen their power to force Africans into the labour market. 
7. Control over the scarce resource of cattle enabled European colonizers to conquer and subdue Africa.

Q 13. What do you understand by the term "indentured labour"? 
Where did indentured labour in India generally came from? 
Where did they usually proceed for work?
Mention the reason for the migration of Indian indentured labour to other countries.
How they were recruited?What were they promised?

1. Indentured labour – A bonded labourer under contract to work for an employer for a specific amount of time, to pay off his passage to a new country or home.
2. Indian indentured workers came from the present-day regions of eastern Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, central India and the dry districts of Tamil Nadu.
3. The main destinations of Indian indentured migrants were the Caribbean islands mainly Trinidad, Guyana and Surinam, Mauritius and Fiji.
4. Tamil migrants went to Ceylon and Malaya. 
5. Indentured workers were also recruited for tea plantations in Assam.
6. In the mid-nineteenth century the present-day regions of eastern Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, central India and the dry districts of Tamil Nadu experienced many changes – cottage industries declined, land rents rose, lands were cleared for mines and plantations. 
7. All this affected the lives of the poor: they failed to pay their rents, became deeply indebted and were forced to migrate in search of work.
8. Recruitment was done by agents engaged by employers and paid a small commission. 
9. Many migrants agreed to take up work hoping to escape poverty or oppression in their home villages.
10. Agents also tempted the prospective migrants by providing false information about final destinations, modes of travel, the nature of the work, and living and working conditions. 
11. Often migrants were not even told that they were to embark on a long sea voyage. 
12. Sometimes agents even forcibly abducted less willing migrants.

Q 14."Nineteenth-century indenture has been described as a ‘new system of slavery". Explain.

1. Nineteenth-century indenture has been described as a ‘new system of slavery’because on arrival at the plantations, labourers found conditions to be different from what they had imagined. 
2. Living and working conditions were harsh, and there were few legal rights.