NCERT Solutions for Class 10 Social Science (India and the Contemporary World – II) Chapter 3: The Making of a Global World
These Class 10 History Chapter 3 solutions cover The Making of a Global World from India and the Contemporary World – II, the NCERT textbook for the 2026–27 session. The chapter traces globalisation back through a long history — the pre-modern world of silk routes and food exchanges, the nineteenth-century flows of trade, labour and capital, the inter-war crisis and Great Depression, and the post-war rebuilding under the Bretton Woods system. Below you get step-by-step answers to every Write in brief and Discuss question, reproduced verbatim, along with key terms, extra practice, MCQs, Assertion–Reason questions and FAQs.
Class: 10Subject: Social Science (History)Book: India and the Contemporary World – IIChapter: 3Theme: Livelihoods, Economies and SocietiesSession: 2026–27
Chapter 3, The Making of a Global World, shows that globalisation is not new but the result of a long history of trade, migration, the search for work and the movement of capital. In the pre-modern world, silk routes linked Asia, Europe and Africa, foods like potatoes and spaghetti travelled across continents, and after 1492 the ‘discovery’ of the Americas reshaped trade — while germs such as smallpox helped Europeans conquer the New World. In the nineteenth century (1815–1914), three flows — of trade, labour and capital — knit a world economy together: the Corn Laws debate, the meat trade, late-colonial conquest of Africa, rinderpest, Indian indentured labour and India’s trade surplus all illustrate its two-sided nature. The inter-war years brought the First World War, a fragile recovery, mass production and the Great Depression of 1929. After the Second World War, the Bretton Woods institutions (the IMF and World Bank) rebuilt a stable world economy, until the system collapsed in the 1970s and a new phase of ‘globalisation’ began with the shift of production to low-wage Asian countries.
Key Terms & Concepts
Silk Routes: a network of land and sea routes that linked vast regions of Asia with Europe and northern Africa before the Christian Era and thrived till about the fifteenth century, carrying Chinese silk, Indian and Southeast Asian textiles and spices, precious metals, religions and ideas.
The three flows: economists identify three movements within international economic exchange — the flow of trade (in goods), the flow of labour (migration of people for work), and the movement of capital (investments over long distances).
Corn Laws: British laws that restricted the import of corn (food grains). After landed groups were unable to keep food prices high, industrialists and urban dwellers forced their abolition, after which cheaper food was imported into Britain.
Rinderpest: a fast-spreading cattle plague that entered Africa in the late 1880s through infected cattle from British Asia and killed about 90% of cattle, destroying African livelihoods and forcing people into the colonial labour market.
Indentured labour: a bonded labourer under contract to work for an employer for a specific amount of time, to pay off the passage to a new country or home. From India such workers were sent mainly to the Caribbean, Mauritius and Fiji; the system was abolished in 1921.
Trade surplus & multilateral settlement: Britain’s exports to India were worth more than its imports from India, giving Britain a ‘trade surplus’ with India. Britain used this surplus to settle its deficits with other countries — a multilateral settlement system.
Assembly line & mass production: a method, pioneered by Henry Ford in his Detroit car plant, in which workers repeat a single task at a pace set by a conveyor belt, producing goods faster and more cheaply (the T-Model Ford was the world’s first mass-produced car).
Great Depression: the worldwide collapse of production, employment, incomes and trade that began around 1929 and lasted till the mid-1930s, caused by agricultural overproduction and the sudden withdrawal of US loans.
Bretton Woods institutions: the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (the World Bank), set up at the 1944 Bretton Woods conference to preserve economic stability and full employment in the post-war industrial world.
Exchange rates: rates that link national currencies for international trade. Fixed exchange rates are kept stable by government intervention; floating/flexible rates move with the demand and supply of currencies.
G-77: the group of developing countries that organised themselves to demand a New International Economic Order (NIEO) — real control over their natural resources, more development assistance, fairer raw-material prices and better market access.
Exercise Solutions (Verbatim)
All questions below are reproduced verbatim from the NCERT textbook’s end-of-chapter Write in brief and Discuss sections. Answers are original, written in exam-ready style.
Write in brief
1. Give two examples of different types of global exchanges which took place before the seventeenth century, choosing one example from Asia and one from the Americas.
ANSWERExample from Asia: The silk routes linked China, India and Southeast Asia with Europe and northern Africa. Chinese silk and pottery, and Indian and Southeast Asian textiles and spices, travelled westwards, while gold and silver flowed from Europe to Asia. Along with goods, religions such as Buddhism, Christianity and Islam, and cultural ideas, also spread along these routes.Example from the Americas: After Christopher Columbus reached the Americas, many crops native to the New World — such as potatoes, maize, tomatoes, chillies, groundnuts, soya and sweet potatoes — were introduced into Europe and Asia. The humble potato, for instance, allowed Europe’s poor to eat better and live longer. In exchange, the Americas received germs and diseases like smallpox from the Old World.
2. Explain how the global transfer of disease in the pre-modern world helped in the colonisation of the Americas.
ANSWERBecause America had been cut off from the rest of the world for millions of years, its original inhabitants had no immunity against the diseases that came from Europe. The most powerful weapon of the Spanish conquerors was therefore not a conventional military weapon but the germs of smallpox that they carried on their bodies.Once introduced, smallpox spread deep into the continent, even ahead of the Europeans themselves, and killed and decimated whole communities. Unlike guns, which could be bought, captured or turned against the invaders, diseases could not be fought, and the Europeans were largely immune to them. The destruction of the local population cleared the way for conquest and made the European colonisation of the Americas far easier.
3. Write a note to explain the effects of the following:
a) The British government’s decision to abolish the Corn Laws.
ANSWERAfter the Corn Laws were scrapped, food could be imported into Britain more cheaply than it could be produced at home. British agriculture could not compete with these imports, so vast areas of land were left uncultivated and thousands of men and women lost their jobs; many migrated to cities or overseas. As food prices fell, consumption and food imports rose, and lands were cleared in Eastern Europe, Russia, America and Australia to meet British demand, which in turn increased capital flows and labour migration.
b) The coming of rinderpest to Africa.
ANSWERRinderpest, a cattle plague, entered Africa in the late 1880s through infected cattle brought from British Asia and spread ‘like forest fire’, killing about 90% of the cattle. The loss of cattle destroyed African livelihoods, since land and livestock had long sustained the people. Planters, mine owners and colonial governments then monopolised the scarce surviving cattle, which strengthened their power and forced impoverished Africans into the wage-labour market. Control over this scarce resource helped Europeans conquer and subdue Africa.
c) The death of men of working-age in Europe because of the World War.
ANSWERThe First World War caused about 9 million deaths and 20 million injuries, and most of the killed and maimed were men of working age. This reduced the able-bodied workforce in Europe, and with fewer earning members household incomes declined after the war. As men went to battle, women stepped in to do jobs earlier reserved for men, which brought lasting changes in society and in the role of women.
d) The Great Depression on the Indian economy.
ANSWERThe Depression immediately hit Indian trade: India’s exports and imports nearly halved between 1928 and 1934, and as world prices crashed, Indian prices — including wheat — fell by about 50%. Peasants producing for the world market, such as Bengal’s jute growers (whose prices fell over 60%), were the worst hit, because the colonial government refused to reduce its revenue demands; they fell deeper into debt and sold their savings, lands and gold, making India an exporter of precious metals. Urban Indians with fixed incomes, however, gained as everything cost less, and rural unrest fed into Mahatma Gandhi’s Civil Disobedience Movement launched in 1931.
e) The decision of MNCs to relocate production to Asian countries.
ANSWERFrom the late 1970s, multinational corporations (MNCs) shifted production to low-wage Asian countries such as China, where costs and wages were low. This relocation stimulated world trade and capital flows, made these countries attractive destinations for foreign investment, and transformed the world’s economic geography as countries like India, China and Brazil underwent rapid economic change. At the same time it added to unemployment in the older industrial countries of the West.
4. Give two examples from history to show the impact of technology on food availability.
ANSWER1. Railways and steamships: Faster railways, lighter wagons and larger ships moved food more cheaply and quickly from distant farms to markets. Railways linked agricultural regions to ports, and improved harbours and shipping carried grain and other produce across the world, so that food could come from thousands of miles away.2. Refrigerated ships: Until the 1870s live animals were shipped from America to Europe and slaughtered there, which was costly and wasteful, keeping meat an expensive luxury. The invention of refrigerated ships allowed animals to be slaughtered at the starting point and transported as frozen meat. This lowered shipping costs and meat prices, so even the European poor could add meat to their diet of bread and potatoes.
5. What is meant by the Bretton Woods Agreement?
ANSWERThe Bretton Woods Agreement refers to the framework of the post-war international economic system, agreed upon at the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference held in July 1944 at Bretton Woods in New Hampshire, USA. Its main aim was to preserve economic stability and full employment in the industrial world.The conference established the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to deal with the external surpluses and deficits of member nations, and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (the World Bank) to finance post-war reconstruction — together known as the Bretton Woods twins. The system was based on fixed exchange rates, in which national currencies were pegged to the US dollar, and the dollar was anchored to gold at a fixed price of $35 per ounce. The IMF and World Bank began operations in 1947.
Discuss
6. Imagine that you are an indentured Indian labourer in the Caribbean. Drawing from the details in this chapter, write a letter to your family describing your life and feelings.
ANSWER(Model answer — a creative response based on the chapter.)Dear Father and Mother,I write to you from the island of Trinidad, far across the great ocean. The agent who recruited me in our village promised easy work and good wages, but he hid the truth — he never told me of the long and frightening sea voyage, nor of how harsh the plantation would be. The work in the cane and cocoa fields is back-breaking; I rise before dawn and my hands are bruised and blistered. If a task is left unfinished, wages are cut, and once I was even punished for being unable to complete my work. There are few legal rights here, and the conditions are far from what I had imagined — people rightly call this a ‘new system of slavery’.Yet I have not lost heart. We labourers from many lands have found our own ways of surviving. We celebrate together — the Muharram procession here has grown into a joyous carnival called ‘Hosay’, in which workers of all races and religions take part — and these gatherings remind us of home and give us strength. Many of us hope to stay on once our five years are over, for there is little to return to in the village. Do not grieve for me; I am alive and working, and I send my love and respect to you all.Your loving son.
7. Explain the three types of movements or flows within international economic exchange. Find one example of each type of flow which involved India and Indians, and write a short account of it.
ANSWEREconomists identify three types of flows within international economic exchange: the flow of trade (largely trade in goods such as cloth or wheat), the flow of labour (the migration of people in search of employment), and the movement of capital for short-term or long-term investment over long distances. All three were closely interwoven and deeply affected people’s lives.Trade — Indian example: India exported fine cotton textiles to Europe, but British tariffs and the flooding of the Indian market with British cloth reduced the share of cotton textiles in India’s exports from about 30% around 1800 to below 3% by the 1870s, while raw cotton and indigo exports rose.Labour — Indian example: In the nineteenth century, hundreds of thousands of Indian indentured labourers from eastern UP, Bihar, central India and dry Tamil Nadu were taken to plantations in the Caribbean, Mauritius and Fiji under contracts promising return after five years — a migration described as a ‘new system of slavery’.Capital — Indian example: Indian bankers and traders such as the Shikaripuri Shroffs and Nattukottai Chettiars financed export agriculture in Central and Southeast Asia, using their own funds or money borrowed from European banks, and developed a sophisticated system to transfer money over long distances.
8. Explain the causes of the Great Depression.
ANSWERThe Great Depression of around 1929 was caused by a combination of several factors that exposed how fragile the post-war world economy was:1. Agricultural overproduction: This remained a serious problem and was worsened by falling agricultural prices. As prices slumped and incomes fell, farmers tried to sell more produce to maintain their income, which only deepened the glut and pushed prices down further, leaving produce to rot for want of buyers.2. Dependence on US loans: In the mid-1920s many countries financed their investments through easy loans from the US. But US overseas lenders panicked at the first sign of trouble — overseas loans were halved within a year — and countries that depended on these loans faced an acute crisis.3. Withdrawal of US loans: This caused the failure of major banks and the collapse of currencies such as the British pound sterling in Europe, and worsened the slump in agricultural and raw-material prices in Latin America and elsewhere.4. US protectionism and banking collapse: The US doubled import duties, dealing a heavy blow to world trade. As prices fell, US banks slashed lending and called back loans; households could not repay, businesses collapsed, and over 4,000 banks closed by 1933, deepening and spreading the Depression.
9. Explain what is referred to as the G-77 countries. In what ways can G-77 be seen as a reaction to the activities of the Bretton Woods twins?
ANSWERThe G-77 (Group of 77) refers to the group of developing countries that organised themselves to demand a New International Economic Order (NIEO) — a system that would give them real control over their natural resources, more development assistance, fairer prices for their raw materials, and better access for their manufactured goods in the markets of developed countries.The G-77 can be seen as a reaction to the Bretton Woods twins (the IMF and the World Bank) because these institutions were designed to meet the financial needs of the industrial countries and were controlled by the Western powers, with the US holding an effective veto. They were not equipped to deal with poverty and the lack of development in the former colonies. Most developing countries did not benefit from the rapid growth of the West in the 1950s and 1960s, and even after decolonisation the former colonial powers and large Western corporations still controlled vital resources cheaply. The G-77 was therefore an attempt by these nations to gain a fairer share of the world’s wealth and to challenge the Western-dominated economic order.
Extra Practice Questions
Short Answer Type Questions
Q1. What were the silk routes, and what travelled along them?
ANSWERThe silk routes were a network of land and sea routes that linked Asia with Europe and northern Africa. They existed from before the Christian Era till about the fifteenth century. Along them travelled Chinese silk and pottery, Indian and Southeast Asian textiles and spices, and gold and silver from Europe, as well as religions such as Buddhism, Christianity and Islam.
Q2. Why did Europe’s poor begin to live longer after the introduction of the potato?
ANSWERThe potato, brought from the Americas, was a cheap and nourishing crop. With it, Europe’s poor could eat better and survive on less land, so they lived longer. However, this also created dependence: when disease destroyed Ireland’s potato crop in the mid-1840s, around a million people died of starvation in the Great Irish Potato Famine.
Q3. How did the First World War transform the United States economically?
ANSWERDuring the war Britain borrowed large sums from US banks and the US public to pay for the fighting. This transformed the US from an international debtor into an international creditor, meaning that at the war’s end the US and its citizens owned more overseas assets than foreigners owned in the US.
Q4. What was the assembly line, and who pioneered it?
ANSWERThe assembly line was a method of mass production in which a conveyor belt set the pace of work and each worker repeated a single task continuously. The car manufacturer Henry Ford pioneered it in his Detroit plant, adapting it from a Chicago slaughterhouse. It produced cars faster and more cheaply — the T-Model Ford was the world’s first mass-produced car.
Q5. What is meant by ‘indentured labour’?
ANSWERIndentured labour means a bonded labourer under contract to work for an employer for a specific period of time in order to pay off the cost of passage to a new country. Indian indentured workers were promised return travel after five years; conditions were so harsh that the system was called a ‘new system of slavery’ and was abolished in 1921.
Long Answer Type Questions
Q1. Describe how a world agricultural economy took shape in the nineteenth century.
ANSWERPopulation growth in Britain increased the demand for food grains and pushed up prices, and after the Corn Laws were abolished, cheap food was imported instead of being grown at home. British agriculture declined and workers migrated, while around the world — in Eastern Europe, Russia, America and Australia — lands were cleared and food production expanded to meet British demand. Railways were built to link farms to ports, harbours were enlarged, and homes and settlements were built; all this needed capital, which flowed from financial centres like London, and labour, which led to mass migration. Nearly 50 million people left Europe for America and Australia. By 1890 a global agricultural economy had taken shape, with food coming from thousands of miles away, grown by migrant workers on large farms, and carried by railways and ships. A similar story applied to cotton and rubber, and world trade multiplied 25 to 40 times between 1820 and 1914.
Q2. Explain the two-sided nature of the nineteenth-century world, using indentured labour migration from India as an example.
ANSWERThe nineteenth-century world was one of faster economic growth as well as great misery — higher incomes for some and poverty for others, technological advances in some areas and new forms of coercion in others. Indentured labour migration from India illustrates this. In regions like eastern UP, Bihar, central India and Tamil Nadu, the decline of cottage industries, rising land rents and the clearing of land for mines and plantations pushed the poor into debt and forced them to migrate. They were recruited by agents who often gave false information about the destination, the work and the voyage, and sometimes even abducted them. On the Caribbean, Mauritian and Fijian plantations conditions were harsh, with few legal rights — a ‘new system of slavery’. Yet workers developed new forms of survival and cultural expression, such as the ‘Hosay’ carnival and ‘Chutney music’, blending old and new. These cultural fusions became part of the making of the global world, even as the system itself was abusive and was finally abolished in 1921.
Q3. How did India’s trade and economy help sustain Britain’s position in the late-nineteenth-century world economy?
ANSWERWith British industrialisation, tariffs cut the inflow of fine Indian cotton into Britain, and British manufactures flooded the Indian market, so India’s share of cotton-textile exports fell from about 30% around 1800 to below 3% by the 1870s. India became an exporter of raw materials — raw cotton, indigo and opium — and an importer of British manufactures. Because the value of British exports to India was far higher than imports from India, Britain had a ‘trade surplus’ with India, which it used to balance its trade deficits with other countries through a multilateral settlement system. This surplus also paid the ‘home charges’ — private remittances by British officials, interest on India’s external debt, and pensions of British officials. In this way India played a crucial role in balancing Britain’s deficits and sustaining the late-nineteenth-century world economy, even as its own industry suffered.
MCQs & Assertion–Reason
1. The silk routes are best described as:
(a) routes used only to trade silk (b) a network linking Asia with Europe and northern Africa (c) sea routes discovered by Columbus (d) modern shipping lanes
2. The most powerful weapon of the Spanish conquerors in the Americas was:
(a) the cannon (b) the musket (c) germs such as smallpox (d) the horse
3. The Corn Laws in Britain were laws that:
(a) encouraged corn exports (b) restricted the import of corn (c) banned all food trade (d) fixed wages of farm workers
4. Rinderpest was a:
(a) human disease (b) cattle plague (c) crop disease (d) type of tax
5. Indian indentured labour migration was abolished in:
(a) 1900 (b) 1914 (c) 1921 (d) 1947
6. The pioneer of mass production using the assembly line was:
(a) John Maynard Keynes (b) Henry Ford (c) Henry Morton Stanley (d) Christopher Columbus
7. The Great Depression began around:
(a) 1914 (b) 1919 (c) 1929 (d) 1944
8. The Bretton Woods conference was held in:
(a) 1919 (b) 1929 (c) 1944 (d) 1947
9. Under the Bretton Woods system, the US dollar was anchored to gold at a fixed price of:
(a) $25 per ounce (b) $35 per ounce (c) $50 per ounce (d) $100 per ounce
10. The G-77 group of countries demanded a:
(a) New International Economic Order (NIEO) (b) fixed exchange rate (c) ban on MNCs (d) return of the Corn Laws
For each Assertion–Reason question, choose: (A) Both true and the Reason correctly explains the Assertion; (B) Both true but the Reason is not the correct explanation; (C) Assertion true, Reason false; (D) Assertion false, Reason true.
A-R 1. Assertion: The European conquest of the Americas was not only a result of superior firepower.
Reason: Germs such as smallpox, to which the local people had no immunity, decimated whole communities and paved the way for conquest.
A-R 2. Assertion: After the Corn Laws were abolished, British agriculture flourished.
Reason: Food could be imported more cheaply than it could be produced at home, so British agriculture could not compete and land was left uncultivated.
A-R 3. Assertion: The development of refrigerated ships lowered meat prices in Europe.
Reason: Animals could be slaughtered at the starting point and transported as frozen meat, reducing shipping costs.
A-R 4. Assertion: The Great Depression hit Indian peasants harder than urban dwellers.
Reason: Agricultural prices fell sharply while the colonial government refused to reduce its revenue demands.
A-R 5. Assertion: The IMF and the World Bank were well-equipped to solve the problems of the former colonies.
Reason: The Bretton Woods institutions were designed to meet the financial needs of the industrial countries and were controlled by Western powers.
Answer key: 1-(A), 2-(D), 3-(A), 4-(A), 5-(D).
Exam Tips & Common Mistakes
How to score full marks in this chapter
Organise the chapter into its four phases — the pre-modern world, the nineteenth century (1815–1914), the inter-war economy, and the post-war Bretton Woods era — and remember the key dates (1845–49 Irish famine, 1885 Berlin conference, 1914–18 First World War, 1921 abolition of indenture, 1929 Great Depression, 1944 Bretton Woods, 1947 IMF/World Bank operations). For the ‘effects’ question (Q3) write a short, clearly labelled note for each part. Always learn the three flows (trade, labour, capital) with an Indian example for each, and the meaning of trade surplus and multilateral settlement. Use the textbook’s own examples — the potato, rinderpest, indentured labour, Henry Ford’s assembly line, Bengal jute growers and the G-77 — to show you have studied the chapter.
Common mistakes to avoid
Thinking globalisation is only a recent phenomenon — the chapter shows it has a long history.
Confusing the three flows (trade = goods, labour = migration, capital = investment).
Saying the Corn Laws encouraged imports — they actually restricted the import of corn.
Mixing up rinderpest (a cattle disease) with a human disease like smallpox.
Forgetting that India had a trade surplus with Britain that Britain used to settle its deficits with others.
Confusing the IMF (handles surpluses/deficits) with the World Bank (finances reconstruction).
Leaving the imaginative letter question (Q6) too short — use chapter details about recruitment, harsh work and cultural survival.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Chapter 3 of Class 10 History about?
Chapter 3, The Making of a Global World, traces the long history of globalisation — the pre-modern silk routes and food exchanges, the nineteenth-century flows of trade, labour and capital, the inter-war economy and the Great Depression, and the rebuilding of the world economy after the Second World War under the Bretton Woods system.
What are the three flows of international economic exchange?
The three flows are the flow of trade (trade in goods such as cloth and wheat), the flow of labour (the migration of people in search of work), and the movement of capital (short-term and long-term investments over long distances). In the nineteenth century these three flows were closely interwoven.
What are the exercise headings for Chapter 3 of India and the Contemporary World – II?
The end-of-chapter exercise has two headings: Write in brief (questions 1 to 5) and Discuss (questions 6 to 9), plus a Project. All nine questions are reproduced verbatim and answered step by step on this page.
