MAKING OF GLOBAL WORLD

Q1) How have human societies become more interlinked?

i) From ancient times, travellers, traders, priests and pilgrims travelled vast
distances for knowledge, opportunity, spiritual fulfilment or to escape
persecution.
ii) They carried goods, values, money, skills, ideas, inventions, and even germs
and diseases.
iii) As early as 3000 BCE, active coastal trade linked the Indus Valley with
present-day west Asia.
iv) Cowries from the Maldives found their way to China and East Africa.
v) Long-distance spread of disease-carrying germs may be traced as far back
as the seventh century.
Q2) State the characteristics of the silk route.
i) The Silk Route is a good example of pre-modern trade and cultural links
between distant parts of the world.
ii) The name Silk Route comes from the importance of west-bound Chinese
silk cargoes along this route.
iii) Historians have identified various silk routes, over land and by sea.
iv) They have knitted together vast regions of Asia, and linked Asia with
Europe and northern Africa as well.
v) They are known to have existed before the Christian era and thrived almost
till the 15th century.
Q3) What are some examples of different types of global exchange that took
place?
i) Chinese pottery, textiles and spices from India and Southeast Asia travelled
across the Silk Route.
ii) In return, precious metals such as gold and silver flowed from Europe to
Asia.
iii) Trade and cultural exchange went hand in hand.
iv) Christian missionaries travelled the silk route to Asia.
v) Muslim preachers as well a few years later.
vi) Much before all this, Buddhism emerged from eastern India and spread in
several directions through the silk route.
Q4) Even ready foodstuff in distant parts of the world might share common
origins. Explain.
i) For example, in the case of spaghetti and noodles, it is believed that noodles
from China travelled west, where they became spaghetti.
ii) Or maybe, Arab traders took pasta to 5th century Sicily, an island now in
Italy.
 iii) Similar foods are also known in Japan and India.
Q5) Why were many of our common foods not known until about 5 centuries
ago?
i) Many of our common foods such as potatoes, soya, groundnuts, maize,
tomatoes, chillies, etc. were not known to our ancestors until 5 centuries
ago.
ii) This is because food was only introduced in Europe and Asia after
Christopher Columbus accidentally discovered the Americas.
Q6) Sometimes the new crops could make the difference between life and death.
Explain.
i) Europe’s poor began to eat better and live longer with the introduction of
the humble potato.
ii) Ireland’s poorest peasants became so dependent on potatoes that, when
disease destroyed the potato crop in the mid-1840s, hundreds of thousands
died of starvation.
Q7) What do we mean when we say that the world shrank in the 1500s?
i) European sailors discovered the sea route to Asia and so trade activities
increased between Asia and Europe.
ii) The American continent was discovered when the sea route through the
Atlantic Ocean was discovered.
iii) There was an increased interaction among the people living on various
continents of the world, thus the world began to shrink in metamorphic
terms.
Q8) Do you agree that the pre-modern world changed with the discovery of new
sea routes to America?
i) Many of our common foods such as potatoes, ground nuts, tomatoes, maize,
first originated from America.
ii) After the sea routes to America were discovered, the food items became an
important part of the diet for all people all over the world.
iii) Potatoes became an important food for the rich and the poor people
iv) America was rich in metals and resources, precious metals such as silver,
located in present-day Mexico and Peru, financed Europe’s trade with Asia
and enhanced its wealth.
v) Many slaves were taken from Africa to work in the plantation industry in
America.
vi) Europe became a centre of world trade due to this.
Q9) Explain how germs like smallpox proved to a weapon in the hands of the
Spanish conquerors.
i) Because of America’s long isolation, America’s original inhabitants had no
immunity against these diseases that came from Europe.
ii) Smallpox in particular proved to be a deadly killer.
iii) It killed and decimated whole communities, paving the way for conquest.
iv) Guns could be bought or captured and used against invaders, but diseases
such as smallpox could not be turned against them as they were mostly
immune to it.
Q10) How did Europe emerge as the centre of world trade?
i) China and India were among the world’s richest countries till the 18th
century.
ii) However, from the 15th century, China is said to have restricted overseas
contracts and retreated to isolation.
iii) China’s reduced role, and the growing importance of the Americans,
gradually moved the centre of world trade towards the West.