world trade westwards. Europe now emerged as the centre of world trade. New words Dissenter – One who refuses to accept established beliefs and practices Fig. 5 – Slaves for sale, New Orleans, Illustrated London News, 1851. A prospective buyer carefully inspecting slaves lined up before the auction. You can see two children along with four women and seven men in top hats and suit waiting to be sold. To attract buyers, slaves were often dressed in their best clothes. Rationalised 2023-24 57 The Making of a Global World The world changed profoundly in the nineteenth centur y. Economic , political, social, cultural and technological factors interacted in complex w ays to transform societies and reshape external relations . Economists identify three types of movement or ‘flows’ within international economic ex changes . The first is the flow of trade which in the nineteenth century refer red lar gely to trade in goods (e.g., cloth or wheat). The second is the flow of labour – the migration of people in search of employment. The third is the movement of capital for short-term or long-term investments over long distances . All three flows were closely interwoven and affected peoples’ lives more deeply now than ever before. The interconnections could sometimes be broken – for example, labour migration was often more restricted than goods or capital flows. Yet it helps us understand the nineteenth-century world economy better if we look at the three flows to gether . 2.1 A World Economy Takes Shape A good place to start is the changing pattern of food production and consumption in industrial Europe. Traditionall y, countries liked to be self-sufficient in food. But in nineteenth-century Britain, self-sufficiency in food meant lower living standards and social conflict. Why was this so? Population growth from the late eighteenth century had increased the demand for food grains in Britain. As urban centres expanded and industry grew, the demand for a gricultural products went up , pushing up food g rain prices . Under pressure from landed groups, the government also restricted the import of corn. The laws allowing the government to do this were commonly known as the ‘Corn Laws’. Unhappy with high food prices, industrialists and urban d wellers forced the abolition of the Corn Laws . After the Corn Laws were scrapped, food could be imported into Britain more cheaply than it could be produced within the country. British agriculture was una ble to compete with imports . Vast areas of land were now left uncultivated, and thousands of men and women were thrown out of work. They flocked to the cities or migrated o verseas . 2 The Nineteenth Century (1815-1914)
