Chapter 3: The Making of a Global World Application Questions | history Class 10 CBSE

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Chapter 3: The Making of a Global World Application Questions | history Class 10 CBSE | ByteNotes.in

Application Question

Hard difficulty • Concept in a practical situation

Hard

Question 1

Applied Concept

With reference to the chapter, a historian argues that 'germs have been more powerful agents of conquest than guns'. Explain this statement using examples from the pre-modern and modern world.

The Spanish and Portuguese conquest of the Americas in the sixteenth century illustrates this point: smallpox carried by European conquerors had no military competition, spread ahead of any European physical presence, and killed entire indigenous communities who had no immunity due to millennia of isolation — paving the way for conquest more effectively than any weapon.
Similarly, rinderpest — a cattle disease, not even a human pathogen — arrived in Africa in the late 1880s and killed 90 per cent of African cattle, destroying livelihoods so completely that European colonisers could monopolise scarce cattle resources and force formerly independent Africans into wage labour, achieving economic conquest through biology.
Unlike guns, which could be captured by indigenous peoples and turned against invaders, diseases exploited biological vulnerabilities that could not be defended against, making them structurally more effective instruments of colonial domination — as John Winthrop's 1634 letter from Massachusetts approvingly noted when thanking God for the smallpox that 'cleared the title' of colonists to American land.

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Application Question

Medium difficulty • Concept in a practical situation

Medium

Question 2

Applied Concept

A jute farmer in Bengal in 1931 is writing in his diary about the effects of the Great Depression. Drawing from the chapter, write what he might say about his economic situation.

The Bengal jute farmer would describe how the price of raw jute had crashed more than 60 per cent as gunny bag exports collapsed worldwide, turning his once-promising crop into a source of debt rather than income.
He would note that despite falling prices he continued to grow more jute — encouraged by money lenders and traders — hoping prices would recover, but each season the traders at home paid less (just Rs 5 a maund as the folk lament described), while his debts to moneylenders kept growing.
He would lament that the colonial government refused to reduce revenue demands despite the price collapse, forcing him to sell his wife's jewellery and perhaps mortgage his land, leaving him wondering why growing for the world market had made him poorer — his situation captured exactly in the Bengali peasant song the chapter quotes.

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Application Question

Medium difficulty • Concept in a practical situation

Medium

Question 3

Applied Concept

With reference to the history of indentured labour, explain the experience of an Indian worker who has just arrived at a sugar plantation in Trinidad in the 1880s.

On arrival, the worker would immediately discover that conditions were nothing like what the recruitment agent had described — he would face heavy physical labour assigned in daily tasks, with deductions from wages if work was considered unsatisfactory, and prosecution and jail time if he could not complete the work due to inexperience or illness.
He would find himself confined to the plantation, unable to move freely, treated as a number rather than a person — his photograph taken for identification by employers who cared only about his labour output, not his name or history.
Despite the hardship, he would gradually seek ways to cope — perhaps joining with workers of other backgrounds in cultural activities, eventually contributing to the emergence of uniquely blended Caribbean cultural forms like Hosay, which helped workers maintain a sense of identity and community in an environment of exploitation.

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Application Question

Hard difficulty • Concept in a practical situation

Hard

Question 4

Applied Concept

A European economist in 1890 surveys the global agricultural economy. Using evidence from the chapter, explain what he would observe about how the world had changed since 1840.

He would observe that food no longer came from a nearby village but from thousands of miles away — wheat from the American Midwest or Australian plains, meat from Argentina or New Zealand, transported by railways and refrigerated steamships to European industrial cities.
He would note the transformation of previously uninhabited or forested land across three continents into cultivated farmland, now worked by recently arrived European emigrants, connected by railways built with London capital specifically to link agricultural interiors to export ports.
He would recognise that world trade had multiplied 25 to 40 times since 1820, with nearly 60 per cent comprising primary products, and that a single decision by the British government — abolishing the Corn Laws — had set off a chain of migration, capital flows, and ecological change that transformed the lives of 150 million people worldwide.

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Application Question

Medium difficulty • Concept in a practical situation

Medium

Question 5

Applied Concept

With reference to the role of technology in global trade, explain how the invention of refrigerated ships illustrates the relationship between technology, colonialism, and improved living standards.

Refrigerated ships, developed in the 1880s, enabled meat to be slaughtered at source in America, Australia, or New Zealand — all colonial or settler territories — and shipped as frozen meat to Europe, rather than transporting live animals that wasted ship space and frequently died or lost weight during the voyage.
This innovation was made possible by colonial infrastructure: refrigerated ships ran on colonial trade routes, connected colonial territories to metropolitan markets, and were part of the broader investment in transport stimulated by European imperial expansion.
The outcome was lower meat prices in Europe, making meat affordable to working-class Europeans who had previously survived on bread and potatoes — illustrating how technological change driven by imperial commerce could, paradoxically, improve the diet and health of the European poor while simultaneously deepening global inequality.

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Application Question

Hard difficulty • Concept in a practical situation

Hard

Question 6

Applied Concept

A government official in colonial Africa is writing a report in 1895 on how to increase the supply of labour to gold mines. Using evidence from the chapter, what methods would he recommend and why were they necessary?

The official would recommend imposing heavy taxes on African communities that could only be paid in cash earned through wage labour on mines and plantations — historically, Africans had land and livestock and saw little need to work for wages in an economy with few consumer goods to buy.
He would also recommend changing inheritance laws so that only one family member could inherit land, pushing all other family members off the land and into the labour market as a structural solution to the shortage of workers.
He would additionally point to the opportunity created by rinderpest — which killed 90 per cent of African cattle — as a means of monopolising scarce surviving cattle resources for mine and plantation owners, using control over this critical asset to compel Africans to accept wage work as their only alternative to destitution.

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Chapter 3: The Making of a Global World | Application Questions

With reference to the chapter, a historian argues that 'germs have been more powerful agents of conquest than guns'. Explain this statement using examples from the pre-modern and modern world.

A jute farmer in Bengal in 1931 is writing in his diary about the effects of the Great Depression. Drawing from the chapter, write what he might say about his economic situation.

With reference to the history of indentured labour, explain the experience of an Indian worker who has just arrived at a sugar plantation in Trinidad in the 1880s.

A European economist in 1890 surveys the global agricultural economy. Using evidence from the chapter, explain what he would observe about how the world had changed since 1840.

With reference to the role of technology in global trade, explain how the invention of refrigerated ships illustrates the relationship between technology, colonialism, and improved living standards.

A government official in colonial Africa is writing a report in 1895 on how to increase the supply of labour to gold mines. Using evidence from the chapter, what methods would he recommend and why were they necessary?

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