The Pre-modern World

• Globalization refers to the interdependence of the world's economic system, culture, technology, and information.
• The history of the global world is associated with trade , migration, and the movement of capital .
• During ancient times, people traveled long distances to acquire knowledge, opportunity, and spiritual fulfillment.
• An active coastal trade connected the Indus valley civilization to modern-day West Asia during the year 3000 BCE.
• More than a thousand years ago seashells from the Maldives found their way to China and East Africa.

Silk Route links the world

• Since ancient times, the Silk route has connected trade and cultural ties across remote regions of the world.
• The silk route has a significant role in the Westbound chinese silk cargoes .
• The silk route binds the vast regions of Asia with Europe and Northern Africa.
• Chinese Pottery, textile items, and spices traveled from India and South East Asia to Europe by the Silk route.
• In return, precious metals such as gold and silver traveled from Europe to Asia . 
• Trade and cultural exchange are always complementary to each other.
• Buddhism emerged from Eastern India and spread to several parts of the world through the Silk route.

Food Travel: Spaghetti and Potato

• People introduced new crops to the area that they traveled.
• Noodles traveled West from China and then became Spaghetti.
• Similarly, Arab traders took pasta from Sicily(Italy).
• A long-distance cultural exchange makes food travel across the world.
• Common foods such as potatoes, soya, groundnuts, maize, chilies, etc introduced in Europe and Asia.
• Many of our staple foods came from America's original inhabitants known as the American Indians.
• Because of the emergence of humble potatoes , the poor in Europe started eating better.
• The poorest peasants in Ireland were so reliant on potatoes that when disease destroyed the harvest in the middle of the 1840s, thousands of people died due to starvation.

Conquest, Disease, and Trade

• After European sailors discovered a sea route to Asia and successfully sailed across the western ocean to America in the 16th century, the premodern world gradually diminished.
• The entry of Europeans redirects the flow of the Indian Ocean towards European countries.
• From the 16th century, America’s vast land and abundant crop and minerals began to trade across the globe.
• Precious metals found in Peru and Mexico increased Europe’s wealth and financed its trade with Asia.
• The Portuguese and Spanish conquest and colonization of America were decisively underway by mid 16th century.
• The disease smallpox emerges in Spain.
• Thousand of people migrate from Europe to America because of widespread disease and religious conflicts.
• By the 18th century, plantations in Africa were growing cotton and sugar for the European market.
• China and India were the predominant countries for trade during the 18th century.
• America became the center of world trade in the western part of the globe and China gradually reduced its role.
• Europe in recent times emerged as a  center of world trade .