zigya tab
Advertisement

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.


Food offers many examples of long-distance cultural exchange. Traders and travellers introduced new crops to the lands they travelled. Even ‘ready’ foodstuff in distant parts of the world might share common origins. Take spaghetti and noodles. It is believed that noodles travelled west from China to become spaghetti. Or, perhaps Arab traders took pasta to fifth-century Sicily, an island now in Italy. Similar foods were also known in India and Japan, so the truth about their origins may never be known. Yet such guesswork suggests the possibilities of long-distance cultural contact even in the pre-modern world.

Many of our common foods such as potatoes, soya, groundnuts, maize, tomatoes, chillies, sweet potatoes, and so on were not known to our ancestors until about five centuries ago. These foods were only introduced in Europe and Asia after Christopher Columbus accidentally discovered the vast continent that would later become known as the Americas.In fact, many of our common foods came from America’s original inhabitants – the American Indians.

1281 Views

Advertisement

 The death of men of working-age in Europe because of the world war.


The effects:
(i)Most of the killed and maimed were men of working age. These deaths and injuries reduced the able-bodied workforce in Europe.

(ii)With fewer numbers within the famly, household income declined after the great war.

(iii)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.

1391 Views

Write a short note to explain the effects of the following:

The coming of rinderpest to Africa.

 


The coming of rinderpest to Africa:

(i) Entering Africa in the East, rinderpest moved West ‘like a forest fire’, streached around Africa’s Atlantic coast in 1892. Cape (Africa’s southernmost tip) was also infested by that lethal disease just after five years. Along the way, rinderpest killed 90 per cent of the total cattle.


(iii) The loss of cattle made African unemployed and starving. Planters, mine owners and  colonial governments now successfully monopolised what scarce cattle resources remained, to strenghten their power and to force Africans into labour market.

(iii)Control over the scarce resource of cattle enabled European colonisers to conquer and subdue Africa.

1967 Views

Explain how the global transfer of disease in the pre-modern world helped in the colonisation of the Americas.


The Portuguese and Spanish conquest and colonisation of America was decisively under way by the mid-sixteenth century.

(i)In fact, the most powerful weapon of the Spanish conquerors was not a conventional military weapon at all. It was the germs such as those of smallpox that they carried on their person.

(ii)Because of their long isolation, America’s original inhabitants had no immunity against these diseases that came from Europe.

(iii)Smallpox in particular proved a deadly killer.Once introduced, it spread deep into the continent, ahead even of any Europeans reaching there

(iv)It killed and decimated whole communities, paving the way for conquest. 

(v)Guns could be bought or captured and turned against the invaders. But not diseases such as smallpox to which the conquerors were mostly immune.

1425 Views

Write a short note to explain the effects of the following:

The British government’s decision to abolish the Corn Laws.




The effects of British Government’s decision to abolish the Corn Laws:

(i)After the Corn Laws were scrapped, food could be imported into Britain more cheaply than it could be produced within the country.

(ii)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.

(iii)They flocked to the cities or migrated overseas. As food prices fell, consumption in Britain rose.
894 Views

Advertisement