Making of a Global World Flashcards
what is the start of glboalisatin
All through history, human societies have become steadily more
interlinked. From ancient times, travellers, traders, priests and
pilgrims travelled vast distances for knowledge, opportunity and
spiritual fulfilment, or to escape persecution. They carried goods,
money, values, skills, ideas, inventions, and even germs and diseases.
how was indus valley linked to the world? what currency was used?
As early as 3000 BCE an active coastal trade linked the Indus valley
civilisations with present-day West Asia. For more than a millennia,
cowries (the Hindi cowdi or seashells, used as a form of currency)
from the Maldives found their way to China and East Africa. The
long-distance spread of disease-carrying germs may be traced as
far back as the seventh century. By the thirteenth century it had
become an unmistakable link.
what is a good example of pre-modern trade?
The silk routes are a good example of vibrant pre-modern trade
and cultural links between distant parts of the world.
what was the significance of the name ‘silk’ route?
The name ‘silk
routes’ points to the importance of West-bound Chinese silk cargoes
along this route.
how many and where are silk routes
Historians have identified several silk routes, over
land and by sea, knitting together vast regions of Asia, and linking
Asia with Europe and northern Africa. They are known to have
existed since before the Christian Era and thrived almost till the
fifteenth century.
what flowed through silk rutes
But Chinese pottery also travelled the same route,
as did textiles and spices from India and Southeast Asia. In return,
precious metals – gold and silver – flowed from Europe to Asia.
how did silk routes allow for cultural exchange’?
Trade and cultural exchange always went hand in hand. Early
Christian missionaries almost certainly travelled this route to Asia, as
did early Muslim preachers a few centuries later. Much before all
this, Buddhism emerged from eastern India and spread in several
directions through intersecting points on the silk routes.
explain cultural links and food?
Traders and travellers introduced new crops to the lands they
travelled. Even ‘ready’ foodstuff in distant parts of the world might
share common origins. Take spaghetti and noodles. It is believed
that noodles travelled west from China to
become spaghetti. Or, perhaps Arab traders
took pasta to fifth-century Sicily, an island now
in Italy. Similar foods were also known in India
and Japan, so the truth about their origins may
never be known. Yet such guesswork suggests
the possibilities of long-distance cultural contact
even in the pre-modern world.
whend di common indians food get intorduced
Many of our common foods such as potatoes,
soya, groundnuts, maize, tomatoes, chillies,
sweet potatoes, and so on were not known to
our ancestors until about five centuries ago.
These foods were only introduced in Europe
and Asia after Christopher Columbus
accidentally discovered the vast continent that
would later become known as the Americas. (Here we will use ‘America’ to describe North America, South
America and the Caribbean.) In fact, many of our common foods
came from America’s original inhabitants – the American Indians.
explain the importance of potato in europe?
Sometimes the new crops could make the difference between life
and death. Europe’s poor began to eat better and live longer with
the introduction of the humble potato. 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.
when did the premodern world shrink greatly
The pre-modern world shrank greatly in the sixteenth century after
European sailors found a sea route to Asia and also successfully
crossed the western ocean to America. For centuries before, the
Indian Ocean had known a bustling trade, with goods, people,
knowledge, customs, etc. criss-crossing its waters. The Indian
subcontinent was central to these flows and a crucial point in their
networks. The entry of the Europeans helped expand or redirect
some of these flows towards Europe.
what was america bfr its discovery
Before its ‘discovery’, America had been cut off from regular contact
with the rest of the world for millions of years. But from the sixteenth
century, its vast lands and abundant crops and minerals began to
transform trade and lives everywhere.
explain south america’s fabled wealth
Precious metals, particularly silver, from mines located in presentday Peru and Mexico also enhanced Europe’s wealth and financed
its trade with Asia. Legends spread in seventeenth-century Europe
about South America’s fabled wealth. Many expeditions set off in
search of El Dorado, the fabled city of gold.
who colonised america? and how were they able to?
The Portuguese and Spanish conquest and colonisation of America
was decisively under way by the mid-sixteenth century. European
conquest was not just a result of superior firepower. In fact, the
most powerful weapon of the Spanish conquerors was not a
conventional military weapon at all. It was the germs such as those
of smallpox that they carried on their person.
how did ameircans fall victim to small pox
Because of their long
isolation, America’s original inhabitants had no immunity against
these diseases that came from Europe. Smallpox in particular proved
a deadly killer. Once introduced, it spread deep into the continent,
ahead even of any Europeans reaching there. It killed and decimated
whole communities, paving the way for conquest.Guns could be bought or captured and turned against the invaders.
But not diseases such as smallpox to which the conquerors were
mostly immune.
