Class 10th Easy Notes History Ch 4 THE MAKING OF A GLOBAL WORLD

Headings of textbook

1. The Pre-modern World
2. The Nineteenth Century (1815-1914)
3. The Inter-war Economy
4. Rebuilding a World Economy : The Post-war Era

The Pre-modern World

• The making of global world features a long history of trade, migration, the movement of capital and far else.
• We need to know the phases through which this world during which we live has emerged.
• From past , traders, priests, pilgrims and  travelers, travelled vast distances for opportunity and spiritual fulfilment, knowledge, or to flee persecution.
• They carried inventions, goods, money, values, skills, ideas and even germs and diseases.

1.1  Silk Routes Link The World

• The silk routes are an honest example of vibrant pre-modern trade and cultural links between distant parts of the planet.
• Silk route are known to possess existed since before the Christian era.
• Chinese pottery and silk travelled from china to other countries.
• Gold and silver travelled to Europe to Asian market.
• Muslim preachers, Christian missionaries and Buddhist monks travelled through silk route.

1.2  Food Travels : Spaghetti and Potato

• It is believed that noodles travelled from China to west.
• Many of our common foods like potatoes, soya, groundnuts, maize, tomatoes, chilies, sweet potatoes, then on are travelled from one place to a different.
• Europe’s poor began to eat better and live longer with the introduction of the standard potato.
• When disease destroyed the potato crop within the mid-1840s, many thousands died of starvation.

1.3  Conquest, Disease and Trade

• European discovered Asia and America through sea route in 16th century.
• It helps them in trading.
• European fixing colonies.
• They take mineral and food crops from America.
• Their life transformed rapidly.
• In mid 16 century Portuguese and Spanish started colonizing America.
• Not with the assistance of arms but disease like small pox.
• Whole community exhausted by this Disease.
• Now Europeans can capture America easily.
• Till 19th century Europe was affected by disease, poverty, religious conflict etc.
• Till 18th century India and China was the richest country within the world.
• China restricted overseas contacts and retreated into isolation.
• The rising importance of America gradually moved the Centre of world trade from China to Europe.

The Nineteenth Century (1815-1914)

• The world changed profoundly within the nineteenth century.
• Economic, political, social, cultural and technological factors interacted in complex ways to rework societies and reshape external relations.
• Economists identify three sorts of movement or ‘flows’.
• The first is that the flow of trade which within the nineteenth century referred largely to trade goods.
• The second is that the flow of labor – the migration of individuals in search of employment.
• The third is that the movement of capital for short-term or long-term investments over long distances.

2.1  A World Economy Takes Shape

• Traditionally, countries liked to be self-sufficient in food.
• In 19th century self-sufficiency in food meant lower living standards and social conflict in Britain.
• In Britain population growth from the late 18th century had increased the demand for food grains.
• Under pressure from landed groups, the government also restricted the import of corn as per corn law.
• The laws allowing the govt to try to do this were commonly referred to as the ‘Corn Laws’.
• As urban centers expanded and industry grew, the demand for agricultural products rise up, pushing up grain prices.
• Unhappy with high food prices, industrialists and concrete dwellers forced the abolition of the Corn Laws.
• After the Corn Laws were scrapped, food might be imported into Britain more cheaply than it might be produced within the country.
• British agriculture was unable to compete with imports. Vast areas of land were now left uncultivated, and thousands of men and ladies were thrown out of labor.
• From the mid 19th century, faster industrial growth in Britain also led to higher incomes, and thus more food imports.
• In Eastern Europe, Russia, America and Australia – lands were cleared and food production expanded to satisfy British demand.
• New harbors had to be built and old ones expanded to ship the new cargoes, as the trade expands.
• People had to choose the lands to bring them under cultivation.
• All over the planet some 150 million are estimated to possess left their homes, crossed oceans and vast distances over land in search of a far better future.
• By 1890, a global agricultural economy had taken shape, amid complex changes in labor movement patterns, capital flows, ecologies and technology.
• Food was transported by railway, built for that very purpose, and by ships.

2.2  Role of Technology

• What was the role of technology altogether this?
• The railways, steamships, the telegraph, as an example , were important inventions without which we cannot imagine the transformed nineteenth-century world.
• Technological advances were often the results of larger social, political and economic factors
• The trade meat offers an honest example of this connected process.
• Till the 1870s, animals were shipped live from America to Europe then slaughtered once they arrived there.
• Many fell ill, lost weight, became unfit to eat and also died in voyage.
• Now animals were slaughtered for food at the beginning line – in America, Australia or New Zealand – then transported to Europe as frozen meat.
• This reduced shipping costs and declined meat prices in Europe.
• Better living conditions encourages social peace within the country and support for imperialism abroad.

2.3  Late 19th Century Colonialism

• Trade flourished and markets expanded within the late nineteenth century.
• It is important to know that there was a darker side to this process.
• In many parts of the earth , the expansion of trade and a far better relationship with the earth economy also meant a loss of freedoms and livelihoods.
• In 1885 the massive European powers met in Berlin to end the carving from Africa between them.
• Britain and France made massive additions to their overseas territories within the late 19th century.
• Belgium and Germany became new colonial powers.
• The US also became a colonial power within the late 1890s by taking over some colonies earlier held by Spain.

2.4  Rinderpest, or the cattle plague

• In Africa, within the 1890s, a fast-spreading disease of cattle plague or rinderpest had a terrifying impact on people’s livelihoods and therefore the local economy.
• Historically, Africa had abundant land and a comparatively small population.
• In late 19th century Africa there have been few commodity that wages could buy.
• In the late nineteenth century, Europeans were interested in Africa thanks to its vast resources of land and minerals.
• Europeans came to Africa hoping to specify plantation and mines to provide crops and minerals for export to Europe.
• But there was an unexpected problem – a shortage of labor willing to figure for wages.
• Employers used many methods to recruit and retain labor.
• Heavy taxes were imposed which might be paid only by working for wages on plantations and mines.
• Inheritance laws were changed in order that peasants were displaced from land.
• Only one member of a family was allowed to inherit land, as a results of which the remaining were pushed into the market.
• Rinderpest came in Africa within the late 1880s.
• Disease was caused by infected cattle imported from British Asia to feed the Italian soldiers.
• Along the way disease killed 90% of the cattle.
• The loss of cattle destroyed African livelihoods.

2.5  Indentured Labor Migration from India

• The example of indentured labor migration from India also illustrates the two-sided nature of the nineteenth-century world.
• In the 19th century, thousands of Chinese and Indian laborers visited work on plantation, in mines, and in road and railway construction projects round the globe.
• In the mid 19th century these areas experienced many changes – cottage industries declined, land rents risen up, lands were cleared for mines and plantations.
• All this affected the lives of the poor: they did not pay their rents, became deeply indebted and were forced to migrate in search of labor.
• The main destinations of Indian indentured migrants were the Caribbean islands, Mauritius and Fiji.
• Indentured workers were also recruited for tea plantations in Assam, India.
• Many migrants agreed to require up work hoping to flee poverty or oppression in their home village.
• From the 1900s India’s nationalist leaders began opposing the system of indentured labor migration as abusive and cruel.
• It was abolished in 1921.

2.6  Indian Entrepreneurs Abroad

• Growing food and other crops for the globe market required capital.Large plantation owner could borrow capital from banks and markets.
• In Central and Southeast Asia the Shikaripuri Shroff and Nattukottai Chettiars were amongst the famous groups of bankers and traders who financed export agriculture in thier region.
• Indian moneylenders and traders also followed European colonizers into Africa.

2.7  Indian Trade, Colonialism and therefore The Global System

• British cotton manufacture began to expand, and industrialists pressurized the government to protect local industries by limiting cotton imports.
• Consequently, the inflow of fine Indian cotton began to fall.
• Indian textiles now faced tough competition in other international markets.
• Exports of manufactures declined quickly, export of raw materials rised equally fast.
• Between 1812 and 1871, the share of raw cotton exports rose from 5% to 35%. Indigo used for dyeing cloth was another important export for few decades.
• Opium shipments to China grew rapidly from the 1820s and become for a while India’s single largest export.
• The value of British exports to India was much above the worth of British imports from India.
• Britain had a ‘trade surplus’ with India. Britain used this surplus to stabilize its trade deficit with other countries.
• By helping Britain balance its deficits, India played an important role within the late-nineteenth-century world economy.

The Inter-war Economy

3.1  Wartime Transformations

• The First war , as you recognize , was fought between two power blocs. On the one side were the Allies – Britain, France and Russia (later joined by the US) and on the other side were the Central Powers – Germany, Austria-Hungary and Ottoman Turkey.
• This war was thus the primary modern industrial war. It saw the utilization of machine guns, tanks, aircraft, chemical weapons, etc. on a huge scale.
• To fight the war, many soldiers had to be recruited from round the world and moved to the frontlines on large ships and trains.
• 9 million dead and 20 million injured – was unthinkable scale before the economic age, without the utilization of commercial arms.
• These injuries and deaths reduced the able-bodied workforce in Europe.
• Industries were rebuilt to supply war-related goods.
• Entire societies were also restructure for war as men were going to battle, women stepped in, to do jobs that earlier only men were bound to do.
• Britain borrowed large sums of cash from US banks also because the US public.
• The war transformed the US from being a world debtor to a world creditor.

3.2  Post-War Recovery

• Britain, which was the world’s leading economy within the pre-war period, especially faced a protracted crisis.
• After the war Britain found it hard to recapture its earlier position of dominance within the Indian market, and to compete with Japan internationally.
• At the top of the war Britain was burdened with huge external debts.
• When the war ended, production contracted and unemployment increased.
• At an equivalent time the govt reduced bloated war expenditures to bring them into line with peacetime revenues.
• In 1921 one in every five British workers was out of labor.
• Before the war, eastern Europe was a serious supplier of wheat within the world market.
• When this supply was disrupted during the war, wheat production in Canada, America and Australia extended dramatically.
• Grain prices decline, rural incomes declined, and farmers fell deeper into debt.

3.3  Rise of Production and Consumption

• One important feature of the US economy of the 1920s was production.
• A pioneer of production was the car maker henry ford.
• He realized that the ‘assembly line’ method can allow a faster and cheaper way of manufacturing vehicles.
• The production line forced workers to repeat one task mechanically and continuously.
• The world’s first mass-produced car was the T-Model Ford.
• In distress Ford doubled the daily wage to $5 in January 1914. At the same time he banned trade unions.
• Mass production lowered costs and costs of engineered goods.
• Car production within the US rose from 2 million in 1919 to quite 5 million in 1929.
• By 1929 the globe would be plunged into a depression like it had never experienced before
• Production of white goods.
• Refrigerator, washing machine, radio etc.- production increased.
• Housing boom in market all of this made US a prosperous economy.
• US started exporting capital to rest the globe and emerged as largest overseas vendor.
• This helped the ecu to recover.

3.4  The Great Depression

• The Great Depression starts around 1929 and lasted till the mid 1930s.
• During this era most parts of the globe experienced catastrophic declines in production, employment, incomes and trade.
• The depression was caused by a mixture of several factors.
• First: agricultural overproduction remained a drag.
• Second: within the mid-1920s, many countries financed their investments through loans from the US.
• The US was also the economic country most severely suffering from Depression.
• With the autumn in prices and therefore the prospect of a depression, US banks had also slashed domestic lending and called back loans.
• Farms couldn't sell their harvests, households were ruined, and businesses collapsed.
• Many households within the US couldn't repay what that they had borrowed, and were forced to offer up their homes, cars and other durables.
• Ultimately, the US banking industry itself collapsed.
• The Great Depression’s wider effects on society, politics and diplomacy , and on peoples’ minds, proved more enduring.

3.5  India and The Great Depression

• The tremors of a crisis in one a part of the globe were quickly relayed to other parts, affecting lives, economies and societies worldwide.
• In the 19th century, colonial India had become an importer of manufactures and exporter of agricultural goods.
• Between 1928 and 1934, India’s exports and imports nearly halved.
• Between 1928 and 1934, wheat prices in India declined by 50%.
• The colonial government refused to scale back revenue demands.
• Indians spent their savings, mortgaged lands, and sold whatever jewelry and precious metals that they had to satisfy their expenses.

Rebuilding a World Economy: The Post-War Era

• The Second war broke out a mere 20 years after the top of the primary war . it had been fought between the Axis powers-mainly Third Reich , Japan and Italy and therefore the Allies-Britain, France, the Soviet Union and therefore the US.
• At least 60 million people, or about 3 per cent of the world’s 1939 population, are believed to possess been killed, directly or indirectly, as a results of the war. Millions more were injured.
• The first was the U.S emergence because the dominant economic, political and military power within the Western world.
• The second was the dominance of the Soviet Union in east.

4.1  Post-War Settlement and therefore The Bretton Woods Institutions

• Economists and politicians drew 2 key lessons from inter-war economic experiences.
• First, an industrial society supported production can't be sustained without mass consumption.
• The second lesson associated with a country’s economic links with the surface world. The goal of financial condition could only be achieved if governments had power to regulate flows of products , capital and labor.
• The main aim of the post-war international financial system was to preserve economic stability and financial condition within the industrial world.
• Its framework was prescribed 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 fund (IMF) to affect external surpluses and deficits of its member nations.
• The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (popularly referred to as the world Bank) was found out to finance postwar reconstruction.
• The IMF and therefore the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development are mentioned because the Bretton Woods institutions or sometimes the Bretton Woods twins.
• The Western industrial powers controlled decision-making in these institutions.
• The Bretton Woods system was supported fixed exchange rates.
• In this system, national currencies, for instance the Indian rupee , were pegged to the dollar at a hard and fast rate of exchange.

4.2  The Early Post-War Years

• World trade grew annually at over 8% between 1950 and 1970 and incomes at nearly 5%.
• The growth was mostly stable, without large fluctuations.
• Developing countries were during a hurry to catch up with the advanced industrial countries.

4.3  Decolonisation and Independence

• The IMF and therefore the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development were designed to satisfy the financial needs of the economic countries.
• They weren't equipped to deal with the challenge of poverty and lack of development within the former colonies.
• At an equivalent time, most developing countries didn't enjoy the fast growth the Western economies experienced within the 1950s and 1960s.
• Therefore they organized themselves as a gaggle – the Group of 77 (or G-77) – to demand a new international economic order (NIEO).
• By the New International Economic Order (NIEO) they want a system that will give them real control on their natural resources, fairer prices for raw materials, more development assistance, and simple access for manufactured goods in developed countries’ markets.

4.4  End of Bretton Woods and therefore The Beginning of ‘Globalization’

• From the 1960s the rising costs of its overseas involvements declined the US’s finances and competitive strength.
• The US dollar now not commanded confidence because the world’s principal currency.
• This eventually led to the collapse of the system of fixed exchange rates and therefore the introduction of a system of floating exchange rates.
• Developing countries could address international institutions for loans and development assistance.
• But now they were forced to borrow from Western commercial banks and personal lending institutions. This led to periodic debt crises within the developing world, and lower incomes, increased poverty, especially in Latin America and Africa.
• China had been stop from the post-war world economy since its revolution in 1949.
• Wages were relatively low in countries like China. Thus they became attractive target for investment by foreign MNCs competing to capture worldwide markets.
• The resettlement of industry to low-wage countries stimulated world trade and capital flows.
• In the last 20 years the world’s geography has been transformed as countries like India, China and Brazil have undergone rapid economic transformation.

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