Class 10 (English Medium) History

This chapter traces how nationalism emerged in nineteenth-century Europe and replaced the multi-national dynastic empires with nation-states. It opens with Frédéric Sorrieu's 1848 vision of a world of democratic and social republics, then shows how the French Revolution of 1789 gave the first clear expression of nationalism and how Napoleon carried its ideas abroad through the Civil Code of 1804. It explains the patchwork of dynastic states, the rise of the liberal middle class, and what liberal nationalism, economic liberalism (the zollverein) and the new conservatism of the Congress of Vienna (1815) stood for. It follows the age of revolutions from 1830 to 1848 — the July Revolution, the Greek war of independence, Romanticism, and the 1848 revolution of the liberals and the Frankfurt Parliament — and then the unification of Germany (Bismarck) and Italy (Cavour and Garibaldi), the strange case of Britain, the visual allegories of the nation (Marianne and Germania), and finally the turn of nationalism towards imperialism and the Balkan tensions that led to the First World War. It is a foundational chapter of the Class 10 History (India and the Contemporary World II) Board syllabus.

This chapter studies the growth of modern nationalism in India from the 1920s, when it became intimately tied to the anti-colonial movement led by the Congress under Mahatma Gandhi. It explains how the First World War, the idea of satyagraha, the Rowlatt Act and the Jallianwalla Bagh massacre set the stage; how the Khilafat and Non-Cooperation Movement (1921) drew in townspeople, peasants, tribals and plantation workers, each with their own idea of swaraj; and why Gandhi withdrew it after Chauri Chaura. It then follows the road to Civil Disobedience — the Simon Commission, Purna Swaraj, and the Salt March to Dandi (1930) — the spread and repression of the movement, the Gandhi-Irwin Pact and the Round Table Conferences, and how different social groups (rich and poor peasants, business classes, workers and women) participated. Finally it examines the limits of civil disobedience (the concerns of dalits and Muslims) and the cultural processes — Bharat Mata, folklore, songs, flags and the reinterpretation of history — through which a sense of collective belonging was forged. It is a central chapter of the Class 10 History (India and the Contemporary World II) Board syllabus.

This chapter traces the long history through which the modern global world took shape — through trade, migration, the movement of capital and even the spread of germs. It begins with the pre-modern world of the silk routes and the long-distance travel of foods like the potato and spaghetti, then shows how the sixteenth-century conquest of the Americas (aided by smallpox) and the flow of silver shifted the centre of world trade to Europe. It explains the three flows of the nineteenth-century world economy (trade, labour and capital), the effects of the Corn Laws and the rise of a global agricultural economy, the role of technology such as railways and refrigerated ships, and the darker side of late-nineteenth-century colonialism — the carving up of Africa, the rinderpest cattle plague, and indentured labour migration from India. It then follows the inter-war economy — the First World War, mass production and Henry Ford, the Great Depression and its impact on India — and the rebuilding of the post-war economy through the Bretton Woods institutions (the IMF and World Bank), decolonisation, the G-77 and the beginnings of present-day globalisation. It is a key chapter of the Class 10 History (India and the Contemporary World II) Board syllabus.

This chapter examines the history of industrialisation, first in Britain — the first industrial nation — and then in colonial India. It shows that industrialisation was not simply a story of factories and rapid technological progress: even before factories there was large-scale production for the world market, known as proto-industrialisation. It traces the coming of the factory, the dominance of cotton and then iron and steel, the slow and uneven pace of technological change, and why industrialists in labour-rich Victorian Britain often preferred hand labour. It then turns to India: the age of Indian textiles and the decline of the old ports, what happened to the weavers under the gomastha and the system of advances, how Manchester cloth flooded the Indian market, and how Indian factories came up under early entrepreneurs and where their workers came from. Finally it looks at the peculiarities of industrial growth in India, the survival and expansion of small-scale and handloom production, and how advertisements created a market for goods. It is a key chapter of the Class 10 History (India and the Contemporary World II) Board syllabus.

This chapter traces the history of print, from its beginnings in East Asia to its spread in Europe and India, and shows how it helped shape the modern world. It begins with the first printed books in China, Japan and Korea, then follows the coming of print to Europe — Chinese paper, Marco Polo, and above all Johann Gutenberg's printing press of the 1430s, which set off the print revolution. It examines the impact of print: the new reading public, the religious debates and the fear of print (Martin Luther and the Reformation, Menocchio and the Index of Prohibited Books), the reading mania of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the argument that print culture created the conditions for the French Revolution. It then turns to the nineteenth century's new readers — children, women and workers — and to India: the rich manuscript tradition, the coming of print, religious reform and public debate, new forms of publication, women and print, print and the poor, and finally print and censorship, including the Vernacular Press Act of 1878. It is a key chapter of the Class 10 History (India and the Contemporary World II) Board syllabus.