CBSE Class 10 Social Science The Making of a Global World Assignment Set A

3.1 THE PRE-MODERN WORLD

The idea of the global world has a long history
– it includes various aspects of trade, migration, people’s search for work and movement of finances.All through history, human societies have become more and more interlinked. From the earliest times, travellers, traders, priests and pilgrims travelled vast distances. They travelled for trade, knowledge, and in the pursuit of spiritualism.
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 Civilisations with present-day West Asia.

Inter-connectedness in the World

Silk Routes
- These represent the vibrant pre-modern trade and cultural links between distant parts of the world.
- Silk routes are indicative of the significance of west-bound Chinese silk in the early days.
Several silk routes over land and the sea have been identified that linked Asia with Europe and northern Africa.
- The silk routes existed even before the Christian era and thrived till the fifteenth century. Other trades along the same route consisted of Chinese pottery, Indian textiles, etc. In return, gold and silver flowed from Europe to Asia.
- Cultural exchange also occurred in this route. Christian missionaries and Muslim preachers travelled on this route.
- Earlier, Buddhism emerged from eastern India and spread in several directions through intersecting points on the silk routes.

Food Travels
Food offers many examples of long-distance cultural exchange.
(a) Traders and travellers introduced new crops to the lands they travelled.
(b) It is believed that noodles travelled west from China to become spaghetti. Perhaps Arab traders took pasta to fifth-century Sicily. Similar foods were also known in India and Japan.
There appears to be long-distance cultural contact in the pre-modern world.
(c) Many of our common foods, such as potatoes, soya, groundnuts, maize, tomatoes, chilies, sweet potatoes, were introduced in Europe and Asia after Christopher Columbus discovered America.
(d) Europe’s poor began to eat better and live longer with the introduction of the potato. Ireland’s poor became so dependent on potatoes that when disease destroyed the potato crop in the mid-1840s, hundreds of thousands died of starvation.

Conquest Disease and Trade

The world became smaller when different sea routes to Asia and America were discovered. ff For centuries, the Indian Ocean had known a bustling trade, with goods, people, knowledge, customs, etc. crisscrossing its waters. The Indian subcontinent was central to these flows and a crucial point in the trading networks.

- The entry of the Europeans helped expand or redirect some of these flows towards Europe. ff After the discovery of America its vast lands and abundant crops and minerals began to transform trade and lives everywhere. Precious metals, particularly silver, from mines located in Peru and Mexico also enhanced Europe’s wealth and financed its trade with Asia.

- Spanish conquest was also helped by germs carried on their person. Because of their isolation, America’s original inhabitants had no immunity against these diseases that came from Europe. Smallpox in particular proved a deadly killer for whole communities.

- Poverty and hunger were common in Europe during the 18th and 19th century. Because of the diseases in crowded cities and religious conflicts, thousands fled Europe for America. Here, plantations worked by slaves that were captured in Africa were growing cotton and sugar for European markets.

- Until well into the eighteenth century, China and India were among the world’s richest countries. However, 15th century onwards gradually China slowed down overseas contacts and reduced its international trade considerably. Europe emerged as the centre of world trade.

3.2 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY (1815- 1914)

The Nineteenth Century
In the nineteenth century, the world changed a great deal. The economic, political, social, cultural and technological factors interacted and affected the societies.
- Economists identify three types of interwoven movements or ‘flows’ in the international trade of 19th century :

(a) Flow of trade, meaning trade in goods (e.g., cloth or wheat).
(b) Flow of labour – the migration of people in search of employment.
(c) Movement of capital for short-term or long-term investments over long distances.

A World Economy Takes Shape

Population growth and expanding urban centres since the late eighteenth century increased the demand for food grains in Britain, pushing up the prices.
- Under pressure from landed groups, the government restricted the import of corn. The laws allowing the government to do this were commonly known as the ‘Corn Laws’.
- As the food prices kept on rising, industrialists and urban dwellers forced the abolition of the Corn Laws. After the Corn Laws were scrapped, food could be imported into Britain more cheaply than it could be produced within the country.
- Thus, vast areas of agricultural land remained uncultivated and many agricultural workers were out of work. Large number of people moved to cities or migrated overseas.
- With the fall in food prices, consumption of food rose sharply. After mid nineteenth century, industrial growth led to faster growth of income in Britain which further increased food imports.
The Consequences
- In Eastern Europe, Russia, America and Australia – land was cleared for agriculture as food production expanded to meet the British demands.
- Railway lines were built, linking the agricultural regions to the ports. Harbours were expanded and new ones built to deal with the cargo efficiently.
- People began settling near the new agricultural lands, which required building homes and other settlements.

For these building activities capital flowed from financial centres such as London. In America and Australia where labour was in short supply more people migrated. Nearly fifty million people emigrated from Europe to America and Australia in the nineteenth century. All over the world some 150 million are estimated to have left their homes, crossed oceans and vast distances over land in search of a better future.
However, an agriculture worker in such places was more likely to be a low paid immigrant working on contract and not a farmer working on his/her land. Many of these workers were from southern Europe, Asia, Africa and the Caribbean. Similar dramatic changes could also be seen in west Punjab. Here 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. The Canal Colonies, as the areas irrigated by the new canals were called, were settled by peasants from other parts of Punjab.

Taking the example of food grains, similar developments took place for commodities like cotton and rubber. Between 1820 and 1914 world trade is estimated to have multiplied 25 to 40 times. Nearly 60 per cent of this trade comprised ‘primary products’ – that is, agricultural products, such as wheat and cotton, and minerals, such as coal. In large parts of the world food no longer came from a nearby village or town, but from far away even overseas.

Role of Technology

The railways, steamships, the telegraph etc., were important inventions that led to the transformation of the world in 19th century. These inventions were often the result of social, political and economic factors. For example, colonisation 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.

Case of Meat Trade
Till the 1870s, animals were shipped live from America to Europe and then slaughtered when they arrived there. The disadvantage of this arrangement was
(a) Live animals took up a lot of ship space. Many died or fell ill and thus became unfit to eat.
(b) This made meat an expensive item for a large number of Europeans. The high prices kept the demand and production of meat down.
(c) However, the development of refrigerated ships, which enabled the transport of perishable foods over long distances changed the picture.
(d) Now animals were slaughtered for food at the starting point in America, Australia or New Zealand and then transported to Europe as frozen meat. This reduced shipping costs and lowered meat prices in Europe.

The poor in Europe could now add meat, eggs, butter, etc., to their diet. Better living conditions promoted social peace within the country and drew support for imperialism abroad.

Late Nineteenth-century Colonialism
- Though trade flourished in the late nineteenth century leading to increased prosperity; it also led to loss of freedom and livelihoods for many in other parts of the world particularly in the colonised societies. In 1885, the big European powers met at Berlin to allocate theAfrican continent amongst themselves.
- Britain and France made vast additions to their overseas territories in the late nineteenth century. Belgium and Germany became new colonial powers. The US also became a colonial power in the late 1890s by taking over some colonies earlier held by Spain.

Destruction Caused by Rinderpest, or the Cattle Plague

In Africa, in the 1890s, cattle plague or Rinderpest had a terrifying impact on people’s livelihoods and the local economy. This is a good example how in this era of conquest even a cattle disease reshaped the lives and fortunes of thousands of people.
(a) Historically, Africa had abundant land and a relatively small population. For centuries, land and livestock sustained African livelihoods and people rarely worked for a wage.
(b) In late nineteenth-century Africa there were very few consumer goods available. Hence one did not need money to buy things.
(c) Europeans came to Africa in the hope to establish plantations and mines to produce crops and minerals for export to Europe. But they faced the unexpected problem of labour shortage.

- They used many methods to recruit and retain labour such as :
(a) Heavy taxes were imposed, which could be paid only by working for wages on plantations and mines.
(b) Inheritance laws were changed by which only one member of a family was allowed to inherit land, as a result of which the others were pushed into the labour market.
(c) Mineworkers were also confined in compounds and not allowed to move about freely.

- Rinderpest, a devastating cattle disease, arrived in Africa in the late 1880s. It was carried by infected cattle imported from British Asia to feed the Italian soldiers invading Eritrea in East Africa. From east Africa, Rinderpest moved west ‘like forest fire’, reaching Africa’s Atlantic coast in 1892. It reached Africa’s southernmost tip five years later. Rinderpest killed 90 per cent of the cattle, which destroyed the livelihood of the Africans.

- The Planters, mine owners and colonial governments easily monopolised the scarce cattle resources and forced the Africans into the labour market. Control over the scarce resource of cattle enabled European colonisers to conquer and subdue Africa.

Indentured Labour Migration from India

The example of indentured labour migration from India also illustrates the two-sided nature of the nineteenth-century world.
(a) It was a world of faster economic growth as well as great misery.
(b) Higher incomes for some and poverty for others.
(c) Technological advances in some areas and new forms of coercion in others.

- In the nineteenth century, hundreds of thousands of Indian and Chinese labourers went to work on plantations, in mines, and in road and railway construction projects around the world. In India, indentured labourers were hired under contracts, which promised return travel to India after they had worked for five years on their employer’s plantation. Most Indian indentured workers came from the present-day regions of eastern Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, central India and the dry districts of Tamil Nadu.

- In the mid-nineteenth century these regions experienced many changes – cottage industries declined, land rents rose, lands were cleared for mines and plantations. 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.

- The main destinations of Indian indentured migrants were the Caribbean islands (mainly Trinidad, Guyana and Surinam), Mauritius and Fiji. Tamil migrants went to Ceylon and Malaya. Indentured workers were also recruited for tea plantations in Assam.

Recruitment of indentured workers was done by agents engaged by employers. Many migrants agreed to take up work hoping to escape poverty or oppression in their home villages. Agents often provided false information about travel, work, living and working conditions. Often, they were not even told about long sea voyage they were to embark. Agents even forcibly abducted less willing migrants. Nineteenth-century indenture has been described as a ‘new system of slavery’.

One of the definition of Indentured labour - A poor person in former times who agreed to work for an employer for a specific number of years. During this period of time, they learnt a skill or job, but had to pay their employer for their travelling and living costs.

On arrival at the plantations, labourers found conditions to be different from what they had imagined. Living and working conditions were harsh, and there were few legal rights. But workers discovered their own ways of surviving. Many of them escaped into the wilds, though if caught they faced severe punishment.

- Workers developed ways of individual and collective self-expression, blending different cultural forms, old and new. In Trinidad the annual Muharram procession was transformed into a riotous carnival called ‘Hosay’ (for Imam Hussain) in which workers of all races and religions joined. Similarly, the protest religion of Rastafarianism (made famous by the Jamaican reggae star Bob Marley) is also said to reflect social and cultural links with Indian migrants to the Caribbean. ‘Chutney music’, popular in Trinidad and Guyana, is also a creative contemporary expression of the post-indenture experience.

- These forms of cultural fusion where things from different places get mixed, lose their original characteristics and become something entirely new. Many indentured workers stayed on after their contracts ended, or returned to their new homes after a short spell in India. That is why there are large communities of people of Indian descent in these countries.

Indian Entrepreneurs Abroad

Indian bankers began financing export of agricultural products in Central and Southeast Asia, using either their own funds or those borrowed from European banks. Shikaripuri Shroffs and Nattukottai Chettiars became important financers.
(a) They had a sophisticated system to transfer money over large distances, and even developed indigenous forms of corporate organisation.
(b) Indian traders and moneylenders also followed European colonisers into Africa.
(c) From 1860’s Hyderabadi Sindhi traders, established flourishing emporia at busy ports worldwide, selling local and imported curios to increasing number of tourists.

Indian Trade, Colonialism and the Global System

Historically, fine cottons produced in India were exported to Europe. With industrialisation, British cotton manufactures and industrialists pressurised the government to restrict cotton imports and protect local industries in England.
- Tariffs were imposed on cloth imports into Britain. From the early nineteenth century, British manufacturers also began to seek overseas markets for their cloth.

- Indian textiles now faced stiff competition in England and other international markets.Share of cotton textiles in exports declined from 30% in 1800 to below 3% in 1870.

- During this period as the export of finished product declined the export of raw materials increased. Between 1812 and 1871, the shareof raw cotton exports rose from 5 per cent to 35 per cent. Indigo used for dyeing cloth was another important export.

- Opium shipments to China grew rapidly from the 1820s to become for a while India’s single largest export. Britain grew opium in India and exported it to China and, with the money earned through this sale, it financed its tea and other imports from China.

- British manufactures flooded the Indian market with their factory-made goods. Even though food grain and raw material exports from India to Britain and other countries increased, its value was much less than the British export to India. Thus, Britain had a ‘trade surplus’ with India.

- Britain used this trade surplus to pay its debt to other countries, pay for private remittances of its employees, interest payment on India’s external debt and pensions of British officials.

3.3 THE INTER-WAR ECONOMY

War Time Transformations
- The First World War was unique as it was fought between two blocks of powerful countries. The warring blocks ‘Allies’ included Britain, France, Russia and later joined by USA, Japan and Italy, and ‘Central Powers”
-that included Germany, Austria, Turkey and Hungary, later joined by Bulgaria.
- It was the first modern war of the industrial era. It saw the use of machine guns, tanks, aircraft, chemical weapons, etc., leading to the death of a large number of young people.
- This led to huge reduction in number of the male population of working age. Many women began taking up work that were done earlier by men.
- Economic ties between some of the world’s largest economic powers were broken. Britain borrowed large sums of money from the US banks as well as the US public. Thus, the war transformed the US from being an international debtor to an international creditor.

Post War Recovery
- Post-war economic recovery was difficult particularly in Britain, which was the world’s leading economy in the pre-war period.
During the war (28 July, 1914 to 11 November, 1918) industries had developed in India and Japan. As the war ended Britain could not recapture its earlier market and found difficult to compete with Japan internationally. ff Post-war Britain was burdened with huge external debts. The war had led to an economic boom leading to a large increase in demand, production and employment. After the war production contracted and unemployment increased.
- The government reduced expenditures to bring them in tune with revenues. This led to huge job losses.  Post-war, because of increased agricultural output, grain prices declined, which affected the rural economies all over the world.

Mass Production and Consumption
- After the war, the US economy resumed its strong growth in the early 1920s.
- Important feature of the US economy was mass production. The pioneer of mass production was the car manufacturer, Henry Ford. He adapted the assembly line of a Chicago slaughterhouse to his new car plant in Detroit. ‘Assembly line’ method allowed a faster and cheaper way of producing vehicles. The T-Model Ford was the world’s first massproduced car.
- Mass production lowered costs and prices of engineered goods. With higher wages, more workers could now afford to purchase durable consumer goods, such as cars, refrigerators, washing machines, radios, gramophone players, all through a system of ‘hire purchase’.
- Credit to buy consumer goods to be repaid in weekly or monthly instalments is called hire purchase. Housing boom happened as these were also financed by loans.
- Large investments in housing and household goods seemed to create a cycle of higher employment and incomes, rising consumption demand, more investment, and yet more employment and incomes. In 1923, the US resumed exporting capital to the rest of the world and became the largest overseas lender. US imports and capital exports also boosted European recovery and world trade and income growth over the next six years.

The Great Depression - Causes
-There was agricultural overproduction and agricultural prices were low. Farmers increased production to maintain their income. This brought even more volume of produce to the market, which pushed down prices even further.

- Many countries had financed their investments by American loans. These lenders panicked at the first sign of trouble and began recalling loans. This led to collapse of many banks and businesses in Europe. It led to the collapse of British Pound Sterling. Europeans stopped buying consumer items, leading to slump in American exports to Europe.

- In 1929, the booming American stock market crashed, which led to the bankruptcy of many banks. As banks gave loans without guarantees and many loans were given for speculating in the stock market. During this period 4000 banks and over 110,000 companies collapsed. ff This resulted in severe loss of business confidence, loss of employment and social disruption.

India and the Great Depression
- In the 19th century, colonial India had become an exporter of agricultural goods and importer of manufactured products. Both export and import slumped.
- Farmers along with jute producers suffered very badly.
- With the fall in grain prices, peasants mortgaged lands and sold their jewellery and precious metals to meet expenses. This made India an exporter of precious metals, notably gold during the depression years.
- Depression did not affect urban dwellers with fixed incomes. In fact, the fall in prices of goods was good for them.

3.4 REBUILDING A WORLD ECONOMY : THE POST-WAR ERA

The Second World War (1st Sep. 1939 – 2nd Sep. 1945) broke out a mere two decades after the end of the First World War. It was fought between the Axis powers (mainly Nazi Germany, Japan and Italy) and the Allies (Britain, France, the Soviet Union and the US). The war was fought on land, in air and in the sea. It lasted for six years on many fronts.

Two Crucial Influences Shaped Post-war Reconstruction.
- The first was that the US emerged as the dominant economic, political and military power in the Western world.
- The second was the dominance of the Soviet Union. It had made huge sacrifices to defeat Nazi Germany and transformed itself from a backward agricultural country into a world power during the years of the Great Depression in the western world.

Post-war Settlement and the Bretton Woods Institutions

Two important lessons from experiencing war time economy
- First, an industrial society based on mass production cannot be sustained without mass consumption.
- To ensure mass consumption, high and stable income was needed, which required steady, full employment. To ensure employment governments intervention was thought necessary.
The main aim of the post-war international economic system was to preserve economic stability and full employment in the industrial world. Its framework was agreed upon at the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference held in July 1944 at Bretton Woods in New Hampshire, USA.
The Bretton Woods conference established the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to deal with external surpluses and deficits of its member nations. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (popularly known as the World Bank) was set up to finance post-war reconstruction. The IMF and the World Bank are referred to as the Bretton Woods twins. The post-war international economic system is also often described as the Bretton Woods system. The IMF and the World Bank commenced financial operations in 1947.

The Early Post-war Years

- There was an era of unprecedented growth of trade and income for the Western industrial nations and Japan. World trade grew annually at over 8 per cent between 1950 and 1970 and incomes at nearly 5 per cent.
- Unemployment rate, averaged less than 5 per cent in most industrial countries.
- Developing countries invested in technology leading to industrialisation.

 Decolonisation and Independence

- Over the next two decades most colonies in Asia and Africa became independent nations. They were, however, very poor and handicapped by long periods of colonial rule.
- As Europe and Japan rapidly rebuilt their economies, IMF and the World Bank began to shift their attention more towards developing countries.
- Ironically, as newly independent countries came under the guidance of international agencies that were dominated by the former colonial powers most developing countries did not benefit from the fast growth the western economies experienced in the 1950s and 1960s.
- Therefore, they organised themselves as a group – the Group of 77 (or G-77) – to demand a New International Economic Order (NIEO), that would give them real control over their natural resources, more development assistance, fairer prices for raw materials, and better access for their manufactured goods in developed countries’ markets.

End of Bretton Woods and the Beginning of Globalisation

- From the 1960s the high cost of American involvement in international affairs weakened their finances. The US dollar could not maintain its value in relation to gold. This led to collapse of fixed exchange rates and introduction of a system of floating exchange rates.
- Developing countries could not get financial support from IMF and World Bank and were forced to borrow from Western commercial banks and private lending institutions. This led to periodic debt crises in the developing world, lower incomes and increased poverty, especially in Africa and Latin America.
- The industrial world was also hit by unemployment that began rising from the mid-1970s. From the late 1970s, MNCs also began to shift production to low-wage Asian countries.
- Wages were relatively low in countries like China. Thus, they became attractive destinations for investment by foreign MNCs competing to capture world markets.
- The relocation of industry to low-wage countries stimulated world trade and capital flows. In the last two decades the world’s economic geography has been transformed as countries, such as India, China and Brazil have undergone rapid economic transformation.

Important Years

1914-18 : First World War was fought
1921 : Indentured labour was abolished
1929-35 : The Great Economic Depression
1939-45 : Second World War was fought
1944, July : The United Nations Monetary Fund and financial conference was held at Bretton Woods at New Hampshire, USA.
1947 : IMF and World Bank commence operation
1970s : Large companies began shifting manufacturing to low wage countries

Important Words and Terms
Biological Warfare : In the context of this chapter it is about the germs of disease like small pox carried by the Portuguese and Spanish they carried on their person. The original inhabitants of America had no immunity for this disease because of their isolation. Small pox in particular killed whole communities making the European victory very easy.
Dissenter : One who refuses to accept established beliefs and practices.
Canal Colonies : The habitations in the areas irrigated by the new canal systems in Punjab.
Rinderpest : An infectious disease of cattle, caused by a paramyxovirus. In 1890s it caused death of 90% of the cattle in the African continent.
Indented labour : A bonded labourers under contract to work for an employer for a specified period of time.
Assembly Line : A manufacturing process in which parts are added as the semi-finished assembly moves from workstation to workstation where the parts are added in sequence until the final product is produced.
MNC (Multinational Corporation) : Large companies which do business in many countries at the same time.
Tariff : Tax imposed on a country imports to restrict it as it makes the product expensive.
Exchange rate : the quantum of exchange value between different currencies of different nations.

Objective Questions