The Making of a Global World Class 10 Notes

The Making of a Global World is Chapter 3 of Class 10 History (NCERT, India and the Contemporary World II). It shows that globalisation is not new. For centuries, trade, people, food, ideas and even diseases have travelled across the world, and these links became much stronger after 1815.

These notes explain the chapter in simple English, section by section, with the terms and questions that matter most for the board exam.

Chapter at a glance

The world has been connected since ancient times through trade routes like the silk routes.
In the nineteenth century, three flows shaped the world economy: trade, labour and capital.
Technology such as railways, steamships and refrigerated ships made trade faster and cheaper.
Colonialism had a dark side: rinderpest in Africa and indentured labour from India.
The Great Depression (1929) hurt economies across the world, including India.
After the Second World War, the Bretton Woods system created the IMF and the World Bank.

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The pre-modern world

Silk routes

The silk routes linked Asia with Europe and northern Africa, by land and by sea. They are known from before the Christian era until almost the fifteenth century. Chinese silk, Indian textiles and spices travelled west; gold and silver travelled east. Buddhism spread from eastern India along these routes, and so did traders, priests and pilgrims.

Food travels

Many common foods reached new continents through trade. Potatoes, soya, groundnuts, maize, tomatoes and chillies came from the Americas after Christopher Columbus reached there in 1492. The potato changed the diet of Europe’s poor. When a disease destroyed the potato crop in Ireland in the mid-1840s, hundreds of thousands died in the Irish Potato Famine (1845–49).

Conquest, disease and trade

In the sixteenth century, Europeans conquered America. The Spanish conquerors’ most powerful weapon was not guns but germs like smallpox, to which the native people had no immunity. Silver from Peru and Mexico increased Europe’s wealth. Until the eighteenth century, China and India were among the richest countries in the world.

The nineteenth century (1815–1914)

Economists describe three types of movements or flows:

Trade: the flow of goods like cloth or wheat.
Labour: the migration of people in search of work.
Capital: the movement of money for short-term or long-term investment over long distances.

A world economy takes shape

In Britain, population growth increased the demand for food. Under pressure from landed groups, the government restricted corn imports through the Corn Laws. When these were scrapped, cheaper food was imported, British agriculture could not compete and many people migrated to cities or overseas. To meet British demand, land was cleared in Eastern Europe, Russia, America and Australia, and railways and ports were built. Nearly 50 million people emigrated from Europe to America and Australia in the nineteenth century.

Role of technology

Railways, steamships and the telegraph were important. A good example is meat: live animals were first shipped from America to Europe. The invention of refrigerated ships allowed meat to be transported frozen. This cut shipping costs and made meat cheaper for the European poor.

The dark side: late nineteenth-century colonialism

Rinderpest in Africa (1890s)

At the Berlin Conference in 1885, European powers divided Africa among themselves. Africans had plenty of land and cattle and did not want to work for wages. Rinderpest, a fast-spreading cattle disease, arrived in the late 1880s through infected cattle imported from British Asia. It killed about 90% of the cattle. Africans lost their livelihood and were forced into the labour market. Colonial governments used this to control Africans.

Indentured labour migration from India

Indentured labour was bonded labour under a contract to work for an employer for a specific time, usually to pay for travel to a new country.

Most workers came from present-day eastern Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, central India and the dry districts of Tamil Nadu.
They went to the Caribbean islands (Trinidad, Guyana, Surinam), Mauritius, Fiji, Ceylon and Malaya.
Recruiters gave false information about the work, and some workers were forcibly taken.
Living and working conditions were harsh, with few legal rights.
Workers created new forms of culture: Hosay in Trinidad (a carnival based on Muharram), the Rastafarianism religion, and “chutney music” in Trinidad and Guyana.
Nationalist leaders opposed the system as abusive and cruel. It was abolished in 1921.

Indian entrepreneurs abroad

Groups like the Shikaripuri shroffs and Nattukottai Chettiars financed export agriculture in Central and Southeast Asia. Hyderabadi Sindhi traders set up shops at busy ports around the world.

Indian trade and colonialism

British manufacturers pushed Indian cotton textiles out of the British market with tariffs. Indian exports shifted to raw materials like raw cotton, and later indigo and opium. Britain had a trade surplus with India, which it used to balance its deficits with other countries and to pay “home charges” (salaries and pensions of British officials, interest on debt).

The inter-war economy

Wartime transformation

The First World War (1914–1918) was the first modern industrial war, fought with machine guns, tanks, aircraft and chemical weapons. Most of the dead were men of working age. Britain borrowed large sums from US banks, and the US changed from a debtor to an international creditor.

Rise of mass production and consumption

Henry Ford adopted the assembly line at his Highland Park plant, which produced a car every three minutes. He doubled the daily wage to $5. Mass production lowered costs and prices, and buying on credit (hire purchase) fuelled a consumption boom in the US.

The Great Depression (1929 to mid-1930s)

Causes:

Agricultural overproduction: prices fell, farmers produced more to maintain income, and prices fell further.
Withdrawal of US loans: when US lenders stopped lending in 1928, countries that depended on these loans faced a crisis.
The US raised import duties, which hurt world trade further.

Impact on India

Between 1928 and 1934, India’s exports and imports nearly halved.
Agricultural prices fell sharply, but the colonial government did not reduce revenue demands.
Peasants’ debts rose. They used up savings, mortgaged land and sold jewellery. India became an exporter of gold.
Urban salaried people gained, because prices fell while their incomes stayed fixed.

Rebuilding after the Second World War

The Second World War (1939–45) caused huge destruction. Two lessons shaped the post-war world: an industrial society depends on mass production and full employment, and the economy needs links with the rest of the world.

The Bretton Woods institutions

In July 1944, the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, USA set up:

the International Monetary Fund (IMF), to deal with external surpluses and deficits of member nations, and
the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank), to finance post-war reconstruction.

The system was based on fixed exchange rates, with national currencies pegged to the dollar, and the dollar anchored to gold at $35 per ounce. The US had veto power over key decisions of the IMF and World Bank.

Decolonisation and the G-77

Most newly independent countries of Asia and Africa felt the Bretton Woods institutions did not serve their interests. They organised as the Group of 77 (G-77) to demand a New International Economic Order (NIEO): real control over natural resources, more development assistance, fairer prices for raw materials and better access to developed markets.

End of Bretton Woods and the beginning of globalisation

From the 1960s, the US dollar lost value and fixed exchange rates gave way to floating rates. Multinational companies (MNCs) moved production to low-wage Asian countries, and China became a major destination for investment. This created today’s globalised economy. Read more in the Globalisation and the Indian Economy notes.

Key terms

Term	Meaning
Silk routes	Ancient trade routes linking Asia, Europe and Africa
Corn Laws	British laws restricting the import of corn
Rinderpest	A fatal cattle disease that spread in Africa in the 1890s
Indentured labour	Bonded labour under contract for a fixed period
Tariff	A tax on imports
Exchange rate	The rate at which one currency is exchanged for another
Veto	The right to reject a decision alone
G-77	Group of developing countries that demanded a new international economic order

Important questions

Explain the three types of flows within international economic exchange. (3 marks)
How did rinderpest change the lives of people in Africa? (3 marks)
What was indentured labour? Describe the conditions of Indian indentured workers. (5 marks)
Explain the causes of the Great Depression and its impact on India. (5 marks)
What were the main aims of the Bretton Woods institutions? (3 marks)
Why did the G-77 countries demand a New International Economic Order? (3 marks)

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FAQs

Is The Making of a Global World in the CBSE board syllabus?

The chapter is part of the NCERT book, but CBSE sometimes marks parts of chapters for internal or periodic assessment only. Check the latest CBSE syllabus PDF or ask your teacher which sections are examined in the board paper.

What are the Bretton Woods twins?

The IMF and the World Bank. Both were set up at the Bretton Woods conference in 1944 and started working in 1947.

How is this chapter connected to Economics?

It gives the history behind the Economics chapter on globalisation. Read it with the Globalisation and the Indian Economy notes for a complete picture.

More Class 10 Social Science notes

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