The Making of a Global World

My Dearest Family,

It has been quite some time since I left our village in India to work as an indentured labourer in the Caribbean and I wanted to share my experiences with you.

Life here is different from what I had expected. The work on the sugarcane plantations is strenuous, and the days are long. The sun beats down relentlessly, and the fields seem endless. We endure difficult conditions, and the daily target of strenuous work is much more than what can be achieved. We are getting very less wages. It is very tough to sustain here. Agents tempted us by providing false information about final destinations, modes of travel, the nature of the work, and living and working conditions. Everything told by them was a lie.

Yet, amidst the hardships, I remain hopeful. Despite the challenges, the camaraderie with my fellow workers has been a source of comfort. We share our stories, dreams, and hopes for a better future.

I dream of the day when I can return home and reunite with all of you. Until then, please know that you are always in my thoughts and prayers.

(name)

The three types of movement or 'flows' within international economic exchanges are:

1. The first is the flow of trade which in the nineteenth century referred largely to trade in goods (e.g., cloth or wheat). All kinds of goods like food grains, cotton, jute, cocoa, tea, textile, meat etc. were part of trade in nineteenth century. All these goods were produced mostly by Asian and African countries for European markets.
2. The second is the flow of labour – the migration of people in search of employment. The demand for labour in places where labour was in short supply – as in America and Australia – led to more migration. India and China became sources of labourers in nineteenth century.
3. The third is the movement of capital for short-term or long-term investments over long distances. Domestic traders were now replaced with big industrialists and colonial powers. They invested in foreign lands known only recently to the world because they had ample of resources.

Examples related to India and Indians:

1. India exported textiles, jute, tea and spices to Europe. Many different foods such as potatoes, soya, groundnuts, maize, tomatoes, chillies and sweet potatoes came to India from the Americas.
2. India provided indentured labourers to the places in Africa and Caribbean islands. Poor and indebted labourers were forced to migrate in search of work. The example of indentured labour migration from India also illustrates the two-sided nature of the nineteenth-century world. It was a world of faster economic growth as well as great misery, higher incomes for some and poverty for others.
3. British colony shifted India's wealth to its own country. To compensate their expenditure they levied heavy taxes on Indians. Also they bought raw material from Indian peasants by paying very less and sold the manufactured product in Indian markets at a higher price. This led to drain of wealth from India.

The causes of the Great Depression were:

1. Agricultural overproduction was made worse by falling agricultural prices. As prices slumped and agricultural incomes declined, farmers tried to expand production and bring a larger volume of produce to the market to maintain their overall income. This worsened the glut in the market, pushing down prices even further.
2. In the mid-1920s, many countries financed their investments through loans from the US. Countries that depended crucially on US loans now faced an acute crisis. The withdrawal of US loans affected much of the rest of the world, though in different ways. In Europe, it led to the failure of some major banks and the collapse of currencies such as the British pound sterling. In Latin America and elsewhere it intensified the slump in agricultural and raw material prices.

The developing countries organised themselves as a group – the Group of 77 (or G-77) – to demand a new international economic order (NIEO). By the NIEO, they meant a system that would give them real control over their natural resources, more development assistance, fairer prices for raw materials, and better access for their manufactured goods in developed countries' markets.

The IMF and the World Bank, referred as the Bretton Woods twins, were designed to meet the financial needs of the industrial countries. They were not equipped to cope with the challenge of poverty and lack of development in the former colonies. But the G-77 was specially organised to address the issues of developing nations.

The Great Irish Potato Famine forced me to leave Ireland and migrate to America in search of a better life and more opportunities. I decided to work in agriculture because I heard about the fertile soil and vast lands in America. Now, my days are spent planting seeds and taking care of crops under the sun. It's not always easy, but I'm earning a living by growing food from the land. I hope that through my hard work, I can build a better future for myself and maybe even for my family someday.

Flow chart showing how Britain's decision to import food led to increased migration to America and Australia is given below:

'The world shrank' means increased interaction and interconnectedness among the people of various continents of the world which occurred due to discovery of new lands and trade routes. The 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. 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.

The migrated labourers developed new forms of individual and collective self expression, blending different cultural forms, old and new. In Trinidad the annual Muharram procession was transformed into a riotous carnival called 'Hosay' (for Imam Hussain) in which workers of all races and religions joined. Similarly, the protest religion of Rastafarianism (made famous by the Jamaican reggae star Bob Marley) is also said to reflect social and cultural links with Indian migrants to the Caribbean. 'Chutney music', popular in Trinidad and Guyana, is another creative contemporary expression of the post-indenture experience. These forms of cultural fusion are part of the making of the global world, where things from different places get mixed, lose their original characteristics and become something entirely new. All this helped the workers in creating a national identity.

Jute growers in Bengal grew raw jute that was processed in factories for export in the form of gunny bags. But as gunny exports collapsed, the price of raw jute crashed more than 60 per cent. Peasants who borrowed in the hope of better times or to increase output in the hope of higher incomes faced ever lower prices, and fell deeper and deeper into debt. Only traders made profits from jute cultivation.

Economists and politicians drew two key lessons from inter-war economic experiences:

1. An industrial society based on mass production cannot be sustained without mass consumption. But to ensure mass consumption, there was a need for high and stable incomes. Incomes could not be stable if employment was unstable. Thus stable incomes also required steady, full employment.
2. The goal of full employment could only be achieved if governments had power to control flows of goods, capital and labour.

Two examples of the different types of global exchanges which took place before the seventeenth century are:

1. Cotton textile, spices and Chinese pottery were exchanged by China, India and Southeast Asia in return for gold and silver from Europe.
2. Gold and food items like potatoes, soya, groundnuts, tomatoes and chillies were exported from the Americas to Europe.

The European countries had already become immune for diseases like small pox. With colonisation of America these diseases spread there. 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 and thus helped in the colonisation of the Americas.

a) The British government's decision to abolish the Corn Laws — After the Corn Laws were scrapped, food could be imported into Britain more cheaply than it could be produced within the country. British agriculture was unable to compete with imports. Vast areas of land were now left uncultivated, and thousands of men and women were thrown out of work. They flocked to the cities or migrated overseas.

b) The coming of rinderpest to Africa — Rinderpest was a fast-spreading disease of cattle plague. It arrived in Africa in the late 1880s. It was carried by infected cattle imported from British Asia to feed the Italian soldiers invading Eritrea in East Africa. Entering Africa in the east, rinderpest moved west 'like forest fire', reaching Africa's Atlantic coast in 1892. It reached the Cape (Africa's southernmost tip) five years later. Along the way rinderpest killed 90 per cent of the cattle. The loss of cattle destroyed African livelihoods. Planters, mine owners and colonial governments now successfully monopolised what scarce cattle resources that remained, to strengthen their power and to force Africans into the labour market.

c) The death of men of working-age in Europe because of the World War — World war led to death of millions of people most of whom were young men or men of working-age. These deaths and injuries reduced the able-bodied workforce in Europe. With fewer numbers within the family, household incomes declined after the war. Entire societies were also reorganised for war – as men went to battle, women stepped in to undertake jobs that earlier only men were expected to do.

d) The Great Depression on the Indian economy — In the nineteenth century, colonial India had become an exporter of agricultural goods and importer of manufactures. The depression immediately affected Indian trade. India's exports and imports nearly halved between 1928 and 1934. As international prices crashed, prices in India also plunged. Between 1928 and 1934, wheat prices in India fell by 50 per cent. Peasants and farmers suffered more than urban dwellers. Though agricultural prices fell sharply, the colonial government refused to reduce revenue demands.

e) The decision of MNCs to relocate production to Asian countries — The industrial world was also hit by unemployment that began rising from the mid-1970s and remained high until the early 1990s. From the late 1970s MNCs also began to shift production operations to low-wage Asian countries. The relocation of industry to low-wage countries stimulated world trade and capital flows. In the last two decades the world's economic geography has been transformed as countries such as India and China have undergone rapid economic transformation.

Two examples from history to show the impact of technology on food availability are:

1. Food no longer came from a nearby village or town, but from thousands of miles away. It was transported by railway, built for that very purpose, and by ships.
2. Till the 1870s, live animals were shipped from America to Europe taking up valuable ship space and often arriving in poor condition. This made meat an expensive luxury for Europeans, limiting demand and production. The development of refrigerated ships in the late 19th century reduced shipping costs, making meat more affordable in Europe and boosting demand and production.

The Bretton Woods conference established the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to deal with external surpluses and deficits of its member nations. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (popularly known as the World Bank) was set up to finance postwar reconstruction. The IMF and the World Bank are referred to as the Bretton Woods institutions or sometimes the Bretton Woods twins. The Bretton Woods system was based on fixed exchange rates. In this system, national currencies, for example the Indian rupee, were pegged to the dollar at a fixed exchange rate.