Globalisation

History glossary

Topic: The Making of a Global World · NCERT: Class 10, Ch 3 "The Making of a Global World"

Meaning

Globalisation is the slow joining-up of the world through the movement of goods, money, people, skills and ideas. It also moved germs (disease). It matters because NCERT's main point is that globalisation is not only a post-1950s story. It is a long series of phases of trade, migration and movement of money that goes back thousands of years.

Explanation

Background: who carried it, and what they carried

  • Globalisation is old, not new. It came in many phases of:
  • trade (buying and selling across long distances)
  • migration (people moving to live in new lands)

  • movement of money

  • Who carried it: travellers, traders, priests and pilgrims.

  • What they carried: goods, money, skills, ideas and germs.
  • Key idea: one network carried many cargoes. The same route that carried silk also carried religion and infection.

Early links: c. 3000 BCE to the 13th century

  • c. 3000 BCE: an active coastal trade (trade by ships sailing along the coast) linked the Indus valley civilisations with West Asia.
  • Cowries (sea shells used as money) came from the Maldives.
  • They reached China and East Africa.

  • This trade went on for over a thousand years.

  • Germs travelled too.

  • The long-distance spread of disease can be traced from the 7th century.
  • By the 13th century the link is "unmistakable".

The silk routes: the great early network

  • Not one road, but many. Some went over land and some went by sea.
  • They tied Asia together.

  • They joined Asia to Europe and northern Africa.

  • Time span: they existed before the Christian Era and thrived almost till the 15th century.

  • The name comes from Chinese silk, which went west along these routes.
  • The land route:
  • It began at Chang'an (today Xi'an) in north-central China.
  • It ran west along the Great Wall, over the Pamirs, through Afghanistan, and into the Levant and Anatolia. This was about 6,400 km in all.

  • From there, goods crossed the Mediterranean to Europe. [2]

  • Its rise and fall:

  • Traders began using the land route more than 2,000 years ago.
  • The Mongols revived it in the 13th–14th centuries. Marco Polo of Venice travelled on it to China.

  • It fell out of use in the 1400s. [2]

  • Goods went one way and money went the other:

  • Westward: Chinese silk, Chinese pottery, and textiles and spices from India and Southeast Asia.

  • Eastward: gold and silver from Europe to Asia.

  • Silk was only one item. The routes also carried textiles, spices, grain, fruit and vegetables, animal skins, tools, wood and metal goods, religious objects, art and precious stones. [3]

  • Religion travelled with trade:
  • Early Christian missionaries used these routes. Muslim preachers came later.
  • Buddhism left eastern India and spread through the points where the routes crossed.
  • Assyrian Christians took their faith into Central Asia and China. Merchants from the Indian subcontinent brought Buddhism to China. [2]

Results: food travels, gains and dangers

  • Food shows old contact. When a dish moves to a new land, it means people moved too.
  • Noodles may have gone west from China and become spaghetti.
  • Or Arab traders may have taken pasta to Sicily in the 5th century.
  • Similar foods already existed in India and Japan, so nobody can say for sure who invented them.

  • NCERT's point is not to settle the question. The fact that the question can be asked at all shows how much contact there was before modern times.

  • After Columbus reached the Americas:

  • About five centuries ago, many common foods were still unknown in Europe, Asia and Africa.
  • They were the foods of the original inhabitants of the Americas. They spread only after Columbus.

  • The list: potato, soya, groundnut, maize, tomato, chilli, sweet potato.

  • The potato helped Europe's poor:

  • They ate better.

  • They lived longer.

  • But Ireland came to depend on one crop:

  • The poorest people lived almost only on potatoes.
  • Irish farmers grew only one or two potato varieties, so the crop had almost no natural defence against new diseases. [4]
  • Late blight (a water mould that rots potatoes) came from North America in 1845. It spread fast in that year's cool, damp weather. [4]

  • This caused the Great Irish Potato Famine (1845–49). NCERT says about 1,000,000 died, and about double that number emigrated (left the country).

  • The lesson: globalisation gave Ireland the potato, and it also gave Ireland the blight.

Time, place and evidence

  • Period: from c. 3000 BCE (the Indus–West Asia coastal trade) through the silk-route age (before the Christian Era to almost the 15th century), then the post-Columbus food exchange, up to the Irish famine of 1845–49.
  • Places:
  • the Indus valley and West Asia
  • the Maldives, China and East Africa (the cowrie trade)
  • Chang'an/Xi'an, the Pamirs, Afghanistan, the Levant and Anatolia (the land silk route) [2]
  • Sicily (pasta)
  • the Americas (new foods)

  • Ireland (the famine)

  • Key people:

  • Marco Polo of Venice, who travelled to China on the revived route [2]
  • the Mongols, who revived the route in the 13th–14th centuries [2]
  • Columbus

  • Christian missionaries, Muslim preachers, Buddhist merchants, and Arab traders

  • How we know:

  • Cowrie shells from the Maldives turning up in China and East Africa.
  • The spread of disease that can be traced from the 7th century.
  • Shared foods (noodles, spaghetti and pasta) in places with no written record of contact.
  • Marco Polo's journey to China. [2]
  • Population figures for Ireland, which fell from about 8.4 million in 1844 to 6.6 million by 1851. Most emigrants went to the United States, Canada, England or Australia. [4]

Don't confuse with

  • Modern (post-1950s) globalisation: this is the recent phase most people mean by the word. NCERT's point is that it is only the latest phase of a process thousands of years old.
  • Liberalisation: this is a government policy that opens an economy, such as India's reforms of 1991. Globalisation is a long world process, not one country's policy.
  • "The Silk Road" as one road: there were many routes, by land and by sea. Silk was only one of many goods. [3]
  • Columbian exchange: this is only the post-Columbus movement of foods (and germs) between the Americas and the rest of the world. Globalisation began thousands of years earlier, with Indus–West Asia trade c. 3000 BCE.

Prelims Hooks

  • c. 3000 BCE: coastal trade linked the Indus valley civilisations with West Asia.
  • Cowries (shell money) came from the Maldives and reached China and East Africa.
  • The land silk route began at Chang'an (Xi'an) and ran about 6,400 km over the Pamirs to the Levant. It was revived by the Mongols in the 13th–14th centuries. [2]
  • Direction trap: silk, pottery, textiles and spices went west. Gold and silver went east (Europe to Asia).
  • "Which of the following came from the Americas?" Potato, soya, groundnut, maize, tomato, chilli and sweet potato. All of them reached the rest of the world only after Columbus.
  • Great Irish Potato Famine, 1845–49: caused by late blight. About 1,000,000 died and about 2,000,000 emigrated. [4]

Mains Points

  • Globalisation has a long history before modern industry.
  • The Indus–West Asia trade (c. 3000 BCE), Maldivian cowries in China and East Africa, and silk routes active from before the Christian Era to the 15th century all show this.
  • World links did not begin with modern capitalism.

  • Use this to argue against the idea that globalisation is a 20th-century invention.

  • Trade routes are also routes of culture and disease.

  • The silk routes carried Chinese silk, Christian missionaries, Muslim preachers, and Buddhism out of eastern India. They also carried germs.
  • Food tells the same story. The noodle–spaghetti puzzle shows contact between China, India, Japan and Sicily that has no written record.

  • Link this to the post-Columbus spread of the potato, maize and chilli, which changed diets in Europe, Asia and India.

  • Dependence is the dark side of exchange.

  • The potato helped Europe's poor live longer.
  • But it made Ireland depend on one crop with almost no variety. [4]
  • When blight struck in 1845, about a million died and two million left.
  • Globalisation brings gains and dangers together. This is a useful line for any question on the costs of countries depending on each other.

Related concepts

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Sources

  1. 1Class 10, Ch 3 "The Making of a Global World" (primary)
  2. 2Silk Road | Facts, History, & Mapbritannica.com · tier 3
  3. 3About the Silk Roads — UNESCOunesco.org · tier 2
  4. 4Great Famine | Definition, Causes, Significance, & Deathsbritannica.com · tier 3