The Making of a Global World

• Globalisation refers to an economic system that has emerged in the last 50 years
• The making of the global world has a long history involving trade, migration, movement of people in search of work, movement of capital, and more
• Human societies have become steadily more interlinked throughout history
• Travellers, traders, priests, pilgrims, and people escaping persecution have travelled vast distances for various reasons
• They carried goods, money, values, skills, ideas, inventions, and even germs and diseases
• An active coastal trade linked the Indus valley civilisations with present-day West Asia as early as 3000 BCE
• Cowries from the Maldives were used as currency and found their way to China and East Africa for more than a millennia
• The long-distance spread of disease-carrying germs can be traced back to as early as the seventh century
• By the thirteenth century, the spread of disease-carrying germs had become an unmistakable link
• From the ninth century, images of ships appeared regularly in memorial stones found on the western coast, indicating the significance of oceanic trade
• The Silk Routes were vibrant pre-modern trade and cultural links between distant parts of the world
• The name 'silk routes' highlights the importance of West-bound Chinese silk cargoes along this route
• Historians have identified several silk routes, over land and by sea, connecting vast regions of Asia and linking Asia with Europe and northern Africa
• The Silk Routes have existed since before the Christian Era and thrived almost until the fifteenth century
• Chinese pottery, textiles, and spices from India and Southeast Asia also travelled along the Silk Routes
• Precious metals like gold and silver flowed from Europe to Asia along these routes
• Trade and cultural exchange were intertwined along the Silk Routes
• Early Christian missionaries and Muslim preachers likely travelled the Silk Routes to Asia
• Buddhism emerged from eastern India and spread through intersecting points on the Silk Routes
• Food offers many examples of long-distance cultural exchange
• Traders and travellers introduced new crops to the lands they travelled
• 'Ready' foodstuff in distant parts of the world might share common origins
• Spaghetti and noodles:

  • Noodles are believed to have travelled west from China to become spaghetti
  • Arab traders may have taken pasta to fifth-century Sicily, now in Italy
  • Similar foods were known in India and Japan, making the truth about their origins uncertain
• Common foods introduced about five centuries ago in Europe and Asia after Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas:

  • Potatoes
  • Soya
  • Groundnuts
  • Maize
  • Tomatoes
  • Chillies
  • Sweet potatoes
• Many common foods came from America's original inhabitants, the American Indians
• New crops introduced from the Americas made a significant impact:

  • Europe's poor improved their diet and longevity with the humble potato
  • Ireland's poorest peasants became heavily reliant on potatoes, leading to mass starvation when the crop was destroyed in the mid-1840s
• European sailors found a sea route to Asia and crossed the western ocean to America in the sixteenth century
• Indian Ocean had a bustling trade with goods, people, knowledge, customs criss-crossing its waters
• Indian subcontinent was central to these trade flows
• Entry of Europeans expanded or redirected some trade flows towards Europe
• America was cut off from regular contact with the rest of the world until the sixteenth century
• America's vast lands, abundant crops, and minerals transformed trade and lives globally from the sixteenth century
• Precious metals, particularly silver from mines in present-day Peru and Mexico, enhanced Europe's wealth and financed trade with Asia
• Legends of South America's fabled wealth spread in seventeenth-century Europe, leading to expeditions in search of El Dorado
• Portuguese and Spanish conquest and colonisation of America began in the mid-sixteenth century
• Spanish conquerors used germs like smallpox as a powerful weapon due to the original inhabitants' lack of immunity, leading to deadly epidemics
• Poverty, hunger, and deadly diseases were common in Europe until the nineteenth century
• Religious conflicts and persecution of dissenters led thousands to flee Europe for America
• By the eighteenth century, plantations in America worked by African slaves were growing cotton and sugar for European markets
• Until the eighteenth century, China and India were among the world's richest countries and pre-eminent in Asian trade