- All questions are compulsory. Internal choices are provided wherever applicable.
- Section A — MCQ (Q1–10): 1 mark each · Section B — Very Short Answer (Q11–18): 2 marks each
- Section C — Short Answer (Q19–27): 4 marks each · Section D — Long Answer (Q28–33): 6 marks each
- Answers to long-answer questions must be written in continuous prose of 150–200 words.
- Draw maps / diagrams wherever required. Marks are awarded for content, not length.
— John Winthrop, first governor of the Massachusetts Bay colony, May 1634
The trade network is called the Silk Routes because West-bound Chinese silk was the most valuable and prominent commodity. Historians have identified several silk routes over land and sea, linking Asia with Europe and northern Africa, in existence since before the Christian Era.
America's original inhabitants had been isolated for millions of years and had no immunity to European diseases. Smallpox spread ahead of soldiers, decimating whole communities and clearing the way for conquest. Guns could be captured and turned against invaders; disease could not.
Rinderpest arrived in Africa in the late 1880s, carried by infected cattle imported from British Asia to feed Italian soldiers invading Eritrea. It moved "like forest fire," reaching the Atlantic coast by 1892 and the Cape by 1897, killing 90% of cattle along the way.
The Corn Laws kept food prices artificially high to benefit landed groups. Industrialists and urban dwellers, unhappy with high food prices, forced their abolition. Once scrapped, Britain imported food cheaply, but British agriculture collapsed, displacing thousands of agricultural workers.
Under the Bretton Woods system, the US dollar was anchored to gold at a fixed price of $35 per ounce. Other national currencies were pegged to the dollar at fixed exchange rates, creating a stable international monetary system that underpinned global growth from 1950–1970.
Between 1820 and 1914, world trade is estimated to have multiplied 25 to 40 times. Nearly 60% of this trade comprised primary products — agricultural goods like wheat and cotton, and minerals like coal — reflecting the dominance of colonial commodity trade.
The IMF was established at Bretton Woods to deal with external surpluses and deficits of member nations. The World Bank (IBRD) was separately created to finance post-war reconstruction. Together they are called the "Bretton Woods twins."
The Great Depression began around 1929 and lasted till the mid-1930s. It was triggered by the Wall Street Crash of October 1929 and caused catastrophic declines in production, employment, incomes and trade worldwide. By 1933, over 4,000 US banks had closed.
British tariffs protected their domestic textile industry and Indian textiles faced stiff competition. India's cotton textile exports fell from 30% around 1800 → 15% by 1815 → below 3% by the 1870s. Meanwhile, raw cotton exports surged from 5% to 35% (1812–1871), turning India into a raw material supplier.
From the 1900s, India's nationalist leaders began opposing indentured labour migration as abusive and cruel. The system was officially abolished in 1921. However, descendants of indentured workers remained an uneasy minority in the Caribbean for decades afterward.
Cowries (Hindi: cowdi) were seashells from the Maldives used as a form of currency in ancient and pre-modern times.
Significance: For more than a millennium, cowries from the Maldives found their way to China and East Africa, demonstrating that global trade networks existed long before modern globalisation. They were among the earliest internationally traded commodities.
Two food items from the Americas: Potatoes, tomatoes, maize, chillies, sweet potatoes, groundnuts, soya (any two).
Impact of the potato: Europe's poor began to eat better and live longer with the introduction of the potato. However, when disease destroyed the potato crop in Ireland in the mid-1840s, hundreds of thousands died of starvation in the Great Irish Potato Famine (~1 million deaths), showing the dangerous dependence that had developed.
Indentured labour: A bonded labourer under contract to work for an employer for a specific period (usually 5 years) to pay off the cost of passage to a new country. The system was described as a "new system of slavery."
Regions of origin: Eastern Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, central India, dry districts of Tamil Nadu (any two).
A trade surplus occurs when the value of a country's exports to another exceeds the value of its imports from that country.
Britain had a trade surplus with India because the value of British exports to India (finished goods, machinery) was much higher than British imports from India (raw materials). Britain used this surplus to balance its trade deficits with other countries (multilateral settlement), and also to pay "home charges" — pensions of British officials, interest on India's external debt, and private remittances.
- Most of the killed and maimed were men of working age, reducing Europe's workforce and household incomes.
- Britain borrowed heavily from the US to finance the war, leaving it burdened with huge external debts at the war's end.
- Industries were restructured for war production; when the war boom ended, production contracted and unemployment soared (in 1921, 1 in 5 British workers was unemployed).
- The war snapped economic links between the world's largest economies that were now fighting each other.
(Any two valid consequences accepted.)
The G-77 (Group of 77) was a coalition of developing countries that organised themselves to demand a fairer share of global economic benefits.
They demanded the New International Economic Order (NIEO) because most developing countries did not benefit from the rapid economic growth of the 1950s–60s enjoyed by Western economies. The NIEO sought: real control over their natural resources, more development assistance, fairer prices for raw materials, and better access for manufactured goods in developed country markets.
Ford doubled the daily wage to $5 in January 1914 because workers were quitting in large numbers, unable to cope with the stress and mechanical pace of the assembly line.
However, at the same time he repeatedly speeded up the production line and forced workers to work harder and harder. By extracting far more output per worker through intensified pace, Ford recovered the higher wage cost through dramatically greater productivity. The higher wages also meant workers could afford to buy the very cars they were making, fuelling consumer demand — hence it was simultaneously both a labour retention strategy and a production cost strategy.
The source reveals that European colonisers viewed the deaths of indigenous people from smallpox not as a tragedy but as a divine sanction or God's blessing that legitimised their conquest and land ownership ("the Lord hathe cleared our title").
This attitude shows the dehumanising and self-serving ideology of colonial conquest — colonisers used religious justification to morally excuse the biological decimation of entire indigenous communities, framing their own possession of stolen land as divinely ordained.
The Silk Routes were a vast network of land and sea paths connecting Asia, Europe and northern Africa, known to have existed since before the Christian Era and thriving until the 15th century. They demonstrate that globalisation is far older than the modern era.
Trade significance: Chinese silk and pottery travelled westwards; Indian textiles and spices moved along these routes; precious metals — gold and silver — flowed from Europe to Asia. Regional specialisation and long-distance commodity exchange were already well established.
Cultural exchange:
- Religion: Early Christian missionaries travelled to Asia; early Muslim preachers followed centuries later. Buddhism spread from eastern India through intersecting points on the Silk Routes.
- Food: Similar noodle dishes found in India, China, Japan and Italy suggest culinary exchange along these routes.
The Silk Routes thus demonstrate that trade and cultural exchange always went hand in hand — an early model of globalisation.
Technological advances were crucial to the transformation of the 19th-century world economy, though they were themselves the result of larger social, political and economic forces like colonialism.
1. Railways and Steamships: Railways linked agricultural regions in America, Australia and India to ports, enabling vast quantities of food and raw materials to be transported quickly and cheaply. Steamships made ocean trade faster and more reliable. Colonisation stimulated investment in these technologies.
2. Refrigerated Ships: Before refrigeration, live animals were shipped from America to Europe, taking up vast space; many died in transit and meat was an expensive luxury beyond the reach of the poor. Refrigerated ships allowed animals to be slaughtered at source and transported as frozen meat, dramatically lowering prices and enabling Europe's poor to add meat to their diet.
The telegraph was another transformative technology, enabling rapid communication of prices, orders and news across continents, making global commodity markets possible.
The abolition of Corn Laws triggered a remarkable chain of global consequences:
- Britain: Cheap food imported → British agriculture collapsed → farm workers displaced → migrated to cities or overseas.
- Americas and Australia: Vast lands cleared for cultivation; railways built to link farms to ports; capital flowed from London; demand for labour led to more migration from Europe. Nearly 50 million emigrated from Europe to America and Australia in the 19th century.
- India: British demand for raw materials intensified. In West Punjab, canal colonies were built, transforming semi-desert wastes into agricultural land producing wheat and cotton for export.
- Global effect: By 1890 a truly global agricultural economy had taken shape, with food produced thousands of miles away from its consumers, transported by railway and steamship, and worked by recently arrived migrants.
Background: Historically, Africans had abundant land and livestock. For centuries, land and cattle sustained African livelihoods and people rarely worked for wages. This made it very difficult for European colonisers to recruit labour for their plantations and mines.
Sequence of events:
- Rinderpest arrived in East Africa in the late 1880s, carried by infected cattle imported from British Asia for Italian soldiers.
- It spread "like forest fire" westward, reaching the Atlantic coast by 1892 and the Cape by 1897 — killing 90% of cattle.
- The loss of cattle destroyed African livelihoods and the basis of economic independence.
- European planters, mine owners and colonial governments monopolised surviving cattle resources, using control over this scarce resource to exercise power.
- Africans, stripped of their cattle and economic independence, were forced into the labour market on European mines and plantations.
Thus, a biological event became a tool of colonial subjugation.
Conditions: On arrival at plantations (in Trinidad, Guyana, Mauritius, Fiji, etc.), labourers found conditions very different from what they had been promised. Living and working conditions were harsh, legal rights were few, tasks were extremely heavy, wages were frequently deducted, and workers faced imprisonment for failing to meet targets.
Resistance: Workers found ways to survive — some escaped into the wilds (risking severe punishment). Others asserted their dignity through collective action and cultural creativity.
New cultural forms (cultural fusion):
- Hosay: The annual Muharram procession in Trinidad was transformed into a riotous carnival called "Hosay" (for Imam Hussain), in which workers of all races and religions joined.
- Rastafarianism: The protest religion (made famous by Bob Marley) reflects cultural links with Indian migrants to the Caribbean.
- Chutney music: Popular in Trinidad and Guyana — a creative contemporary expression of the post-indenture experience.
Indian bankers and traders played a significant, though often overlooked, role in 19th-century global trade.
Shikaripuri Shroffs and Nattukottai Chettiars were among the many groups who financed export agriculture in Central and Southeast Asia. They used either their own funds or those borrowed from European banks, and had sophisticated systems to transfer money over large distances. They even developed indigenous forms of corporate organisation.
Indian traders and moneylenders also followed European colonisers into Africa, financing trade across the continent.
Hyderabadi Sindhi traders ventured beyond European colonies. From the 1860s they established flourishing emporia at busy ports worldwide, selling local and imported goods to tourists and merchants.
These groups thus acted as financial intermediaries and commercial agents, lubricating the global economy at a time when European banks could not or did not reach every corner of the colonial world.
Causes of the Great Depression:
- Agricultural overproduction: Farmers, facing falling prices, expanded production to maintain income — worsening the market glut and pushing prices further down.
- Fragile post-war economy: Many countries were deeply dependent on US loans for investment.
- US loan withdrawal: In the first half of 1928, US overseas loans amounted to over $1 billion; a year later it was one-quarter of that. Countries dependent on US loans faced immediate crisis.
- Bank failures: US banks slashed domestic lending, called back loans; by 1933 over 4,000 banks had closed and 110,000 companies collapsed.
- Trade war: The US doubled import duties, dealing a further blow to world trade.
Impact of US loan withdrawal: In Europe, it caused major bank failures and currency collapses (including the British pound). In Latin America and elsewhere, it intensified the slump in agricultural and raw material prices.
The Depression immediately affected Indian trade. India's exports and imports nearly halved between 1928 and 1934. Wheat prices fell by 50%; Bengal jute prices crashed by more than 60%.
Why peasants suffered more:
- Agricultural prices fell sharply, but the colonial government refused to reduce revenue demands — peasants still had to pay full taxes.
- Peasants producing for the world market (jute, wheat, cotton) were worst hit as export prices collapsed.
- They fell deeply into debt, sold jewellery and gold to meet expenses — making India an exporter of gold during these years.
- Rural India was seething with unrest, which Mahatma Gandhi channelled into the Civil Disobedience Movement (1931).
Urban India was less affected — those with fixed incomes found their money went further as prices fell, and industrial investment grew as tariff protection was extended.
(i) Ram Narain Tewary was an indentured labourer from India who spent ten years working on a plantation in Demerara (present-day Guyana) in the early 20th century. (1 mark)
(ii) Two hardships:
- He was unable to complete the heavy tasks allotted to him, causing his hands to become bruised, and was then sent to jail for 14 days for not working.
- Wage deductions were made if work was considered unsatisfactory, meaning labourers could not earn their full wages and were punished in multiple ways. (2 marks — 1 each)
(iii) Indenture has been called a "new system of slavery" because, despite being technically contractual, workers had virtually no legal rights, faced imprisonment for failing tasks, could not freely leave, and were subjected to conditions vastly different from what they were promised. (1 mark)
The 16th century was a turning point in the history of globalisation. European sailors found sea routes to Asia and crossed the Atlantic to America, connecting continents that had previously been largely separate — causing the world to "shrink."
Trade: For centuries before, the Indian Ocean had bustling trade networks with goods, people and knowledge criss-crossing its waters. The Indian subcontinent was central to these flows. European entry expanded and redirected these flows toward Europe. Precious metals — silver from Peru and Mexico — began financing European trade with Asia, shifting the centre of gravity of world trade westwards. Europe emerged as the new centre of world trade.
Disease: The most dramatic and deadly consequence of contact was biological. America's indigenous peoples, isolated for millions of years, had no immunity to European diseases. Smallpox in particular proved a deadly killer — it spread ahead of European soldiers, decimating whole communities and "clearing the way" for conquest. The Spanish and Portuguese colonisation of America was decisively under way by the mid-16th century, aided enormously by this biological weapon.
Migration: Until the 19th century, poverty and hunger were common in Europe. Cities were crowded with disease. Religious conflicts led thousands to flee to America. Plantations worked by enslaved Africans grew cotton and sugar for European markets — creating forced trans-Atlantic migration on a massive scale.
Consequences: While European powers gained wealth and global dominance, indigenous American populations were decimated, Africans were enslaved, and Asian trade networks were subordinated to European interests. The "shrinking world" created deep inequalities that persisted for centuries.
India's role in the 19th-century global economy was both significant and deeply exploitative — a paradox of being central to global flows while receiving few of the benefits.
Trade — the declining textile story: Historically, India exported fine cottons to Europe. With British industrialisation, tariffs blocked Indian textile imports. India's cotton textile exports collapsed from 30% (1800) to below 3% (1870s). Meanwhile, India was forced to export raw cotton (rising from 5% to 35% of exports, 1812–1871), indigo and opium — becoming a raw material supplier rather than a finished goods exporter.
The multilateral settlement trap: Britain maintained a trade surplus with India. While India ran a surplus with the rest of the world (through raw material exports), Britain used India's earnings to balance its own deficits with other countries. India also paid "home charges" — pensions and salaries of British officials, interest on India's external debt — effectively subsidising the British Empire.
Indian bankers and entrepreneurs: Groups like the Shikaripuri Shroffs, Nattukottai Chettiars and Sindhi traders did play active roles — financing export agriculture in Southeast Asia and establishing trading emporia worldwide. This shows Indian agency within the global system.
Indentured labour: Indian workers powered plantations in Trinidad, Guyana, Mauritius and Fiji, contributing to global agricultural output — yet they lived in conditions described as a "new system of slavery," with few rights and harsh conditions.
Conclusion: India was essential to British imperial finance, global trade flows, and colonial labour supply. Yet colonial policies systematically drained Indian wealth — through forced deindustrialisation, exploitative taxation, extraction of surplus, and coercive labour — making India's role "crucial but unrewarded."
Introduction: Globalisation — the integration of economies, societies and cultures across the world — is often seen as a product of the internet age. In reality, its roots stretch back thousands of years.
Pre-modern world: As early as 3000 BCE, the Indus Valley traded with West Asia. The Silk Routes (before 15th century) linked Asia, Europe and northern Africa, moving silk, spices, precious metals, religions and ideas. Food itself became a carrier of global exchange — noodles, pasta, potatoes and chillies all crossed continents. Disease too spread globally — smallpox from Europe decimated America's indigenous peoples.
19th century: The pace of globalisation accelerated dramatically. The three flows — trade, labour and capital — interconnected the globe. 150 million people migrated across continents. World trade grew 25–40 times. Railways, steamships and refrigeration transformed commodity trade. However, this globalisation was driven by colonialism — African cattle plagues, Indian deindustrialisation, and indentured labour all show the darker side of 19th-century global connection.
Post-WW II era: The Bretton Woods system (1944) created institutions to manage global trade and finance. Between 1950 and 1970, world trade grew 8% annually and incomes 5%, with unprecedented stability. Yet developing countries, as the G-77 articulated, did not share equally in this growth. Former colonial powers continued to dominate global institutions.
Were benefits equally distributed? Clearly not. At every stage — pre-modern, 19th century and post-war — globalisation produced both connections and inequalities. Those with power (European empires, later the US and West) extracted disproportionate benefits, while colonised peoples, indentured workers, and developing nations bore disproportionate costs. Modern globalisation, with MNCs relocating to low-wage Asian countries, continues this unequal pattern even as some nations like India and China have benefited from it.
