About This Section
This section collects previous-year Board examination questions (CBSE and State Boards) from Chapter 3, with model answers, to show the pattern and depth expected in the exam.
Board PYQ — Very Short Answer (1 mark)
Q1. Which crop's failure caused a famine in Ireland in the 1840s? Ans. The potato.
Q2. In which year did the IMF and World Bank begin operations? Ans. 1947.
Q3. What is a tariff? Ans. A tax imposed on a country's imports, levied at the border or airport.
Board PYQ — Short Answer (3 marks)
Q4. Explain the effect of the coming of rinderpest to Africa. Ans. Rinderpest killed 90 per cent of Africa's cattle, destroying the livelihoods that had allowed Africans to live independently. Colonial governments and planters monopolised the surviving cattle, forcing Africans into the wage-labour market — so the disease strengthened European control over Africa.
Q5. Explain the effect of the death of working-age men in Europe during the First World War. Ans. Most of the 9 million killed and 20 million injured were men of working age. This reduced the able-bodied workforce, lowered household incomes, and led women to take up jobs earlier done only by men, reshaping European society and the economy.
Board PYQ — Short Answer (3 marks)
Q6. Explain the effect of the Great Depression on the Indian economy. Ans. India's exports and imports nearly halved (1928–34) and wheat prices fell 50 per cent. As the government refused to lower revenue, peasants (especially jute growers, whose prices crashed over 60 per cent) fell into debt, sold gold and jewellery, and India became an exporter of gold — fuelling the rural unrest behind the Civil Disobedience Movement.
Q7. Explain the decision of MNCs to relocate production to Asian countries. Ans. From the late 1970s, MNCs shifted production to low-wage Asian countries like China, because their low-cost structure — especially low wages — made goods cheaper to produce. This stimulated world trade and capital flows and transformed the world's economic geography.
Board PYQ — Long Answer (5 marks)
Q8. Explain how the world became a 'global agricultural economy' by 1890. Ans. After the Corn Laws were scrapped, Britain imported cheap food; British agriculture declined and workers migrated. To meet British demand, lands were cleared in America, Australia, Eastern Europe and Russia; railways linked farms to ports, new harbours were built, and settlers migrated. Capital flowed from London and about 50 million Europeans migrated. Thus by 1890 a global agricultural economy had taken shape, with food coming from thousands of miles away.
Q9. Describe the two-sided nature of the nineteenth-century world economy. Ans. The nineteenth-century world saw faster economic growth, technological advance and higher incomes for some — but also great misery, loss of freedoms and new forms of coercion for others. Indentured labour and Rinderpest show the darker side: while trade and prosperity expanded, colonised peoples often lost their livelihoods and freedoms as they were drawn into the world economy.