The Making of a Global World – important questions for Boards 2027

CBSE Class 10 Social Science

1. MCQ · 1 mark

   Which statement best describes the silk routes? Select the correct option. (A) They were sea routes connecting only China and Europe after the fifteenth century. (B) They were land and sea routes linking regions of Asia with Europe and northern Africa, and existed before the Christian Era. (C) They connected only India and Southeast Asia and began in the fifteenth century. (D) They were routes used exclusively for the movement of religious preachers.

   Answer

   (B) They were land and sea routes linking regions of Asia with Europe and northern Africa, and existed before the Christian Era — Historians have identified several silk routes, over land and by sea, knitting together vast regions of Asia, and linking Asia with Europe and northern Africa. They are known to have existed since before the Christian Era.

2. SA · 2 marks

   Explain the silk routes as examples of both trade and cultural exchange, giving one example of goods exchanged and one example of cultural or religious exchange.

   Answer

   The silk routes are a good example of vibrant pre-modern trade and cultural links between distant parts of the world. Chinese pottery also travelled the same route, as did textiles and spices from India and Southeast Asia. Early Christian missionaries almost certainly travelled this route to Asia.

3. MA · 3 marks

   Explain how wider social, political and economic forces, including colonisation, stimulated transport improvements that transformed nineteenth-century trade.

   Answer

   1. The railways, steamships and telegraph were important inventions of the transformed nineteenth-century world. 2. Larger social, political and economic factors often drove technological advances, while colonisation stimulated new investments and transport improvements. 3. Faster railways, lighter wagons and larger ships helped move food more cheaply and quickly from faraway farms to final markets.

4. LA · 4 marks

   How did the First World War transform the United States’ position as an international debtor and creditor? Explain what this meant for ownership of overseas assets.

   Answer

   The First World War transformed the United States from an international debtor into an international creditor. 1. The war snapped economic links between some major powers, which were now fighting each other and needed funds to pay for the conflict. 2. Britain borrowed large sums from US banks and the US public, making American banks and citizens lenders to Britain. 3. By the war’s end, the United States and its citizens owned more overseas assets than foreign governments and citizens owned in the United States. 4. An international creditor holds financial claims or assets abroad, while an international debtor owes funds to others; the United States had changed from the latter position to the former. This shift made the United States a major international creditor after the war.

5. LA · 5 marks

   Explain why late nineteenth-century European colonial expansion was not simply a period of expanding trade and prosperity for colonised societies.

   Answer

   Late nineteenth-century colonial expansion connected colonised societies to the world economy, but it also brought serious losses and changes. 1. Expanding trade and closer economic links did not guarantee freedom or prosperity for colonised people; they also meant a loss of freedoms and livelihoods. 2. European conquests brought painful economic changes to colonised societies, even as trade flourished and markets expanded internationally. 3. Colonial rule also produced painful social changes, affecting the lives and relationships of people in the conquered societies. 4. The process had ecological consequences too, so its effects reached beyond trade and the economy to the environments of colonised regions. Thus, colonial expansion had a darker side: it brought colonised societies into the world economy through conquest, with losses to livelihoods and freedoms and economic, social and ecological change.

6. MCQ · 1 mark

   Which possibility about spaghetti and noodles illustrates long-distance cultural contact in the pre-modern world? (A) Noodles may have travelled west from China, or Arab traders may have taken pasta to Sicily. (B) Potatoes travelled from Europe to the Americas before Columbus. (C) Spaghetti was first introduced to Asia by refrigerated ships. (D) Traders carried pasta only between India and Japan.

   🔒 Answer locked. Unlock all answers on SmartKalike

7. SA · 2 marks

   Explain how European voyages connected the Americas to wider global trade, and state why the Indian subcontinent had already been central to trade networks.

   🔒 Answer locked. Unlock all answers on SmartKalike

8. MA · 3 marks

   Explain how British tariffs and competition in overseas markets affected India’s exports of cotton textiles.

   🔒 Answer locked. Unlock all answers on SmartKalike

9. LA · 5 marks

   Describe how European powers divided and expanded their colonial territories in the late nineteenth century, referring to the Berlin meeting of 1885.

   🔒 Answer locked. Unlock all answers on SmartKalike

10. MCQ · 1 mark

    Which option correctly describes the origin and spread of many familiar foods such as potatoes, maize, tomatoes and chillies? (A) They originated in Europe and reached the Americas after Columbus’s voyage. (B) They originated in the Americas and were introduced to Europe and Asia after Columbus’s voyage. (C) They originated in Asia and were introduced to the Americas by Arab traders. (D) They originated in Africa and spread to Europe before the fifteenth century.

    🔒 Answer locked. Unlock all answers on SmartKalike