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The Making of a Global World is Chapter 3 of the NCERT Class 10 history textbook, India and the Contemporary World II (NCERT chapter PDF). Its argument: globalisation is not a fifty-year-old story, because trade, migration and capital have linked societies for thousands of years.
What does CBSE test from this chapter in 2026-27?
The CBSE Social Science curriculum for 2026-27 splits the chapter in two. Subtopics 1 to 1.3, from the pre-modern world to 'Conquest, disease and trade', are evaluated in the board examination. Subtopics 2 to 4.4, from the nineteenth century (1815-1914) to the end of Bretton Woods, form an interdisciplinary project with Geography and Economics, internally assessed for 5 marks. History as a whole carries 20 marks, including 2 for map pointing.
So the silk routes are board material and the Great Depression is project material. Check the project details with your teacher.
What were the silk routes and the pre-modern world?
The chapter opens with very old links (NCERT chapter). As early as 3000 BCE, a coastal trade linked the Indus valley civilisations with present-day West Asia. Cowries from the Maldives, used as currency, reached China and East Africa.
The silk routes were several land and sea routes linking Asia with Europe and northern Africa, and NCERT says they existed before the Christian Era and thrived almost till the fifteenth century. Chinese silk and pottery and Indian and Southeast Asian textiles and spices went west; gold and silver flowed from Europe to Asia. Ideas travelled too: Buddhism spread from eastern India through points on these routes.
Two more ideas complete the board portion. Food travelled: potatoes, maize, tomatoes and chillies reached Europe and Asia only after Columbus reached the Americas. Conquest reshaped trade: smallpox, more than guns, helped the Spanish conquer America, American silver financed Europe's trade with Asia, and the centre of world trade moved west to Europe.
How did the nineteenth-century world economy take shape?
NCERT frames 1815 to 1914 through three flows: trade in goods, labour migrating for work, and capital invested over long distances (NCERT chapter).
Trade: between 1820 and 1914, world trade is estimated to have multiplied 25 to 40 times, and nearly 60 per cent of it was primary products such as wheat, cotton and coal.
Labour: nearly 50 million people emigrated from Europe to America and Australia. Indian indentured workers went to the Caribbean, Mauritius and Fiji; the system was abolished in 1921.
Capital: money flowed from centres such as London to build railways and harbours.
For India the turn was sharp. Cotton textiles fell from about 30 per cent of India's exports around 1800 to 15 per cent by 1815 and below 3 per cent by the 1870s, while raw cotton rose from 5 to 35 per cent of exports between 1812 and 1871.
What caused the Great Depression, and how did it hit India?
The Great Depression began around 1929 and lasted till the mid-1930s, with catastrophic falls in production, employment, incomes and trade (NCERT chapter). NCERT says it had several causes, and two stand out: farm overproduction with falling prices, and the withdrawal of US loans, which fell from over $1 billion in the first half of 1928 to a quarter of that a year later.
India felt it at once. Its exports and imports nearly halved between 1928 and 1934, wheat prices fell by 50 per cent, and the price of raw jute in Bengal crashed by more than 60 per cent. Peasants sank into debt, and rural India was in unrest when Mahatma Gandhi launched the civil disobedience movement at the height of the depression in 1931.
How do you write an answer and plan the rest?
Try the NCERT discussion question: explain what we mean when we say the world 'shrank' in the 1500s. For a 3-mark answer, aim for three points, each with evidence from the chapter:
European sailors found a sea route to Asia and reached America, which had been cut off from the rest of the world.
Crops, silver and germs moved between continents: potatoes fed Europe's poor, American silver financed trade with Asia, and smallpox cleared the way for conquest.
As China withdrew and the Americas grew in importance, the centre of world trade moved west to Europe.
Then split the year by how each part is assessed:
Board portion (1 to 1.3): write a one-page summary, practise two short answers a week, and check every date against the textbook; our guide to checking history dates and events in NCERT shows how.
Project portion (2 to 4.4): start with NCERT's own activity, a flow chart from Britain's food imports to migration to America and Australia. Our guide to making a cause-and-effect chart for a history chapter walks through one.
Before the paper: practise source-style questions with our guide to answering case-based questions in CBSE board exams.
If science and maths also need a plan this term, Fermi's AI tutor works out what you already know and builds a plan for the session.
Read the chapter once in full, then spend your revision where the marks are.
