Questions
5
Q1
How was the pre-modern world connected through trade and travel?
The pre-modern world was connected through trade routes, migration, pilgrimage, conquest, and exchange of goods, ideas, foods, and diseases. Silk routes linked Asia, Europe, and North Africa and carried both commodities and cultures.
Q2
Explain the role of food and disease in global history.
Foods such as potatoes, maize, tomatoes, and chillies travelled across continents after contact between the Americas and the rest of the world. Diseases also travelled, and smallpox helped European conquest by devastating indigenous populations in the Americas.
Q3
What were the main flows in the nineteenth-century world economy?
The nineteenth-century world economy was shaped by flows of goods, labour, and capital. Trade expanded, people migrated as indentured labourers or settlers, and capital moved from industrial countries to colonies and other regions.
Q4
Who were indentured labourers and what were their conditions?
Indentured labourers were workers who signed contracts to work abroad for a fixed period, often under harsh conditions. Many came from India and worked on plantations in the Caribbean, Fiji, Mauritius, and other colonies, facing low wages and strict discipline.
Q5
How did the Great Depression affect the global economy?
The Great Depression reduced production, trade, employment, and incomes across the world. Agricultural prices fell sharply, debt burdens increased, and colonies like India suffered because export markets and rural incomes declined.