CBSE
Class 10 History Notes Chapter 3 – The Making of a Global World
The Pre-Modern World
Globalisation refers to an economic system that has emerged
in the last 50 years or so. 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. From ancient times, travellers, traders, priests and
pilgrims travelled vast distances for knowledge, opportunity and spiritual
fulfilment or to escape persecution. As early as 3000 BCE, an active coastal
trade linked the Indus Valley civilisations with present-day West Asia.
Silk Routes Link the World
Silk routes are a good example of vibrant pre-modern trade
and cultural links between distant parts of the world. Several silk routes have
been identified by historians, overland and sea, connecting vast regions of
Asia and linking Asia with Europe and northern Africa. In exchange for textiles
and species from India, precious metals – gold and silver – flowed from Europe
to Asia.
Food Travels: Spaghetti and Potato
Food offers many examples of long-distance cultural
exchange. New crops were introduced by traders and travellers. Ready foodstuff
such as noodles travelled west from China to become spaghetti. Our ancestors
were not familiar with common foods such as potatoes, soya, groundnuts, maize,
tomatoes, chillies, sweet potatoes, and so on about five centuries ago. Many of
our common foods came from America’s original inhabitants – the American
Indians.
Conquest, Disease and Trade
The Indian Ocean, for centuries before, had known a bustling
trade, with goods, people, knowledge, customs, etc., crisscrossing its waters.
The entry of Europeans helped redirect these flows towards Europe. America’s
vast lands and abundant crops and minerals began to transform trade and live
everywhere. The Portuguese and Spanish conquest and colonisation of America
were decisively underway by the mid-sixteenth century.
Europeans’ most powerful weapon was not a conventional
military weapon, but germs such as those of smallpox that they carried on their
person. It proved to be a deadly killer. Until the nineteenth century, poverty
and hunger were common in Europe. Until well into the eighteenth century, China
and India were among the world’s richest countries. However, from the fifteenth
century, China is said to have restricted overseas contacts and retreated into
isolation. Europe now emerged as the centre of world trade.
The Nineteenth Century (1815-1914)
In the nineteenth century, economic, political, social,
cultural and technological factors interacted in complex ways to transform
societies and reshape external relations. Three flows or movements were
identified by economists.
- The
first is the flow of trade, referred largely to trade in goods (e.g.,
cloth or wheat).
- The
second is the flow of labour – the migration of people in search of
employment.
- The
third is the movement of capital for short-term or long-term investments
over long distances.
A World Economy Takes Shape
In the nineteenth-century, self-sufficiency in food meant
lower living standards and social conflict in Britain. It happened because of
population growth from the late eighteenth century. Corn laws were imposed,
which means restrictions on the import of corn. British agriculture was unable
to compete with imports, and vast areas of land were left uncultivated. So,
thousands of men and women flocked to the cities or migrated overseas.
In Britain, food prices fell, and in the mid-nineteenth
century, industrial growth led to higher incomes and more food imports. In
order to fulfil British demand, in Eastern Europe, Russia, America and
Australia, lands were cleared to expand food production. In order to manage the
linking of railways to agricultural fields and building homes for people
required capital and labour. London helped in terms of finance and terms of
labour people emigrated from Europe to America and Australia in the nineteenth
century.
By 1890, a global agricultural economy had taken shape,
adapting to complex changes in labour movement patterns, capital flows,
ecologies and technology. In West Punjab, the British Indian government built a
network of irrigation canals to transform semi-desert wastes into fertile
agricultural lands to grow wheat and cotton for export. Even the cultivation of
cotton expanded worldwide to feed British textile mills.
Role of Technology
Some of the important inventions in the field of technology
are the railways, steamships, and the telegraph, which transformed the
nineteenth-century world. But technological advances were often the result of
larger 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.
Animals were also shipped live from America to Europe till the 1870s. Meat was
considered an expensive luxury beyond the reach of the European poor. To break
the earlier monotony of bread and potatoes, many could now add meat (and butter
and eggs) to their diet.
Late Nineteenth-Century Colonialism
Trade flourished, and markets expanded in the late
nineteenth century. But, it has a darker side, too, as in many parts of the
world, the expansion of trade and a closer relationship with the world economy
meant a loss of freedoms and livelihoods. In 1885 the big European powers met
in Berlin to complete the carving up of Africa between them. Britain and France
made vast additions to their overseas territories. 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.
Rinderpest, or the Cattle Plague
In Africa, in the 1890s, a fast-spreading disease of cattle
plague impacted people’s livelihoods and the local economy. Africa had abundant
land and a relatively small population. In the late nineteenth century,
Europeans were attracted to Africa due to its vast resources of land and
minerals.
Europeans came to Africa hoping to establish plantations and
mines to produce crops and minerals for export to Europe. But there was an
unexpected problem – a shortage of labour willing to work for wages.
Inheritance laws were changed, and according to the new one, only one member of
a family was allowed to inherit the land. In the late 1880s, Rinderpest arrived
in Africa carried by infected cattle imported from British Asia to feed the
Italian soldiers invading Eritrea in East Africa. The loss of cattle destroyed
African livelihoods.
Indentured Labour Migration from India
Indentured labour illustrates the two-sided nature of the
nineteenth-century world. A world of faster economic growth as well as great
misery, higher incomes for some and poverty for others, technological advances
in some areas and new forms of coercion in others. In India, indentured
labourers were hired under contracts, and most of them came from the
present-day regions of eastern Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, central India and the dry
districts of Tamil Nadu.
Indian indentured migrants’ main destinations were the
Caribbean islands (mainly Trinidad, Guyana and Surinam), Mauritius and Fiji.
Indentured workers were also recruited for tea plantations in Assam.
Nineteenth-century indenture has been described as a ‘new system of slavery’.
In Trinidad, the annual Muharram procession was transformed into a riotous
carnival called ‘Hosay’ in which workers of all races and religions joined.
Similarly, the protest religion of Rastafarianism is also
said to reflect social and cultural links with Indian migrants to the
Caribbean. From the 1900s, India’s nationalist leaders began opposing the
system of indentured labour migration as abusive and cruel. It was abolished in
1921.
Indian Entrepreneurs Abroad
People need a huge capital to grow food and other crops for
the world market. So, for the humble peasant Shikaripuri shroffs and
Nattukottai Chettiars were amongst the many groups of bankers and traders who
financed export agriculture in Central and Southeast Asia, using either their
own funds or those borrowed from European banks.
Indian Trade, Colonialism and the Global System
Cotton from India was exported to Europe. In Britain,
tariffs were imposed on cloth imports. Consequently, the inflow of fine Indian
cotton began to decline. Over the nineteenth century, British manufacturers
flooded the Indian market. By helping Britain balance its deficits, India
played a crucial role in the late-nineteenth-century world economy. Britain’s
trade surplus in India also helped pay the so-called ‘home charges’ that
included private remittances home by British officials and traders, interest payments
on India’s external debt, and pensions of British officials in India.
The Inter-War Economy
The First World War (1914-18) was fought in Europe, but its
impact was felt around the world. During this period, the world experienced
widespread economic and political instability and another catastrophic war.
Wartime Transformations
The First World War was fought between the Allies – Britain,
France and Russia (later joined by the US); and the Central Powers – Germany,
Austria-Hungary and Ottoman Turkey. The war lasted for more than four years and
involved the world’s leading industrial nations. It was considered the first
modern industrial war, which saw the use of machine guns, tanks, aircraft,
chemical weapons, etc., on a massive scale. During the war, industries were
restructured to produce war-related goods. Britain borrowed large sums of money
from US banks as well as the US public, transforming the US from being an
international debtor to an international creditor.
Post-War Recovery
Post-war economic recovery, Britain, the world’s leading
economy, faced a prolonged crisis. Industries had developed in India and Japan
while Britain was preoccupied with the war. Britain, after the war, found it
difficult to recapture its earlier position of dominance in the Indian market
and to compete with Japan internationally. At the end of the war, Britain was
burdened with huge external debts. Anxiety and uncertainty about work became an
enduring part of the post-war scenario.
Rise of Mass Production and Consumption
The US economy recovered quicker and resumed its strong
growth in the early 1920s. Mass production is one of the important features of
the US economy, which began in the late nineteenth century. Henry Ford is a
well-known pioneer of mass production, a car manufacturer who established his
car plant in Detroit. The TModel Ford was the world’s first mass-produced car.
Fordist industrial practices soon spread in the US and were also copied in
Europe in the 1920s. The demand for refrigerators, washing machines, etc., also
boomed, financed once again by loans. In 1923, the US resumed exporting capital
to the rest of the world and became the largest overseas lender.
The Great Depression
The period of The Great Depression began around 1929 and
lasted till the mid1930s; most parts of the world experienced catastrophic
declines in production, employment, incomes and trade. The most affected areas
were agricultural regions and communities. A combination of several factors led
to depression. The first factor is agricultural overproduction, the second is
in the mid-1920s, many countries financed their investments through loans from
the US. The rest of the world is affected by the withdrawal of US loans in
different ways. The US was also severely affected by depression. Unfortunately,
the US banking system collapsed as thousands of banks went bankrupt and were
forced to close.
India and the Great Depression
Indian trade is immediately affected by the depression. The
prices of agriculture fell sharply but still, the colonial government refused
to reduce revenue demands. In those depression years, India became an exporter
of precious metals, notably gold. Rural India was thus seething with unrest
when Mahatma Gandhi launched the civil disobedience movement at the height of
the depression in 1931.
Rebuilding a World Economy: The Post-War Era
Two decades after the end of the First World War, the Second
World War broke out. 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 continued for six years over land, on the sea, and in the air.
The war caused an immense amount of economic devastation and social disruption.
Post-war reconstruction was shaped by two crucial influences. The first one is
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.
Post-War Settlement and the Bretton Woods Institutions
Two-key lessons were drawn out from inter-war economic
experience. First, mass production cannot be sustained without mass
communication. The second lesson related to a country’s economic links with the
outside world. 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 postwar reconstruction. The IMF
and the World Bank commenced financial operations in 1947.
The Early Post-War Years
An era of unprecedented growth of trade and income was
inaugurated by the Bretton Woods for the Western industrial nations and Japan.
During this decade, technology and enterprise were spread worldwide.
Decolonisation and Independence
After the end of the Second World War, large parts of the
world were still under European colonial rule. The IMF and the World Bank were
designed to meet the financial needs of the industrial countries. The IMF and
the World Bank from the late 1950s shift their attention more towards
developing countries. Most developing countries were not benefited from the
fast growth the Western economies experienced in the 1950s and 1960s. They
organised as a group – the Group of 77 (or G-77) – and demanded a new international
economic order (NIEO). NIEO meant a system that would give them real control
over their natural resources, more development assistance, fairer prices for
raw materials, and better access to their manufactured goods in developed
countries’ markets.
End of Bretton Woods and the Beginning of ‘Globalisation’
The US’s financial and competitive strength was weakened due
to the rising costs of its overseas involvement from the 1960s. In the
mid-1970s, the international financial system also changed and the industrial
world was also hit by unemployment. MNCs began to shift their production to
low-wage Asian countries. China became an attractive destination for investment
by foreign MNCs. 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.
