The Making of a Global World Timeline

Imp Event Major Event Critical Event

Phase I — Early Global Connections [c. 3000 BCE–1700 CE]

c. 3000 BCE Imp Event 01

Indus Valley Trade Reaches West Asia

Coastal trade connected the Indus Valley civilisation with regions of West Asia, showing that long-distance exchange existed thousands of years before modern globalisation.

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Analysis: Early maritime trade linked distant economies through goods and ideas. These connections later grew into wider land and sea networks such as the Silk Roads.

2nd Century BCE–16th Century CE Major Event 02

Silk Roads Link Continents

Networks of land and maritime routes connected China, India, Central Asia, West Asia, Europe and North Africa, carrying goods, religions, technology and knowledge.

Analysis: The Silk Roads made intercontinental exchange regular rather than exceptional. Growing maritime navigation eventually created even more direct links across the oceans.

1492 Critical Event 03

Sustained Atlantic Contact Begins

Christopher Columbus's 1492 voyage was followed by sustained contact between Europe and the Americas, initiating large-scale transfers of crops, animals, people and disease.

Analysis: Atlantic expansion joined the Americas to older Afro-Eurasian networks on an unprecedented scale. The same connection also enabled conquest, epidemic disease and extraction of American wealth.

16th Century Major Event 04

Disease, Conquest and American Silver Reshape Trade

Old World diseases such as smallpox devastated Indigenous populations, while silver extracted in the Americas entered expanding trade networks linking Europe and Asia.

Analysis: Global connections could spread both wealth and catastrophe. European commercial expansion increasingly shifted the organisation of world trade toward Atlantic empires.

Phase II — The Nineteenth-Century World Economy [1815–1914]

1815 Imp Event 05

Britain Enacts the Corn Laws

Britain protected domestic grain producers through restrictions and duties on imported corn, helping keep food prices high.

Analysis: Protection benefited landowners but increased pressure on industrial workers and urban consumers. Opposition to expensive food eventually pushed Britain toward freer grain imports.

From 1834 Major Event 06

Indian Indentured Labour Migration Expands

After slavery was abolished in the British Empire, plantation colonies increasingly recruited Indian workers under fixed-term indenture contracts, beginning on a large scale with Mauritius.

Analysis: Global labour mobility expanded alongside trade, but workers often faced deception, coercion and harsh conditions. At the same time, pressure for freer commodity trade was intensifying in Britain.

1846 Critical Event 07

Britain Repeals the Corn Laws

Parliament repealed the Corn Laws, allowing cheaper imported grain to enter Britain and strengthening the country's move toward free trade.

Analysis: Cheaper imports encouraged food production to expand overseas while some British agricultural workers lost employment. Demand for food helped connect distant farms, ports, workers and investors into one world economy.

1850s–1914 Major Event 08

Trade, Labour and Capital Flows Intensify

Goods crossed borders in growing volumes, millions migrated in search of work, and investors financed farms, railways, mines and infrastructure far from home.

Analysis: These three flows became mutually reinforcing parts of the nineteenth-century global economy. Their expansion depended heavily on new transport technologies.

1870s–1880s Imp Event 09

Transport Technology Shrinks Economic Distance

Railways, steamships and refrigerated shipping lowered transport costs and made long-distance movement of grain, meat and other goods faster and more reliable.

Analysis: Technology connected producers in distant regions directly with industrial markets. These commercial opportunities also intensified European competition for territory and resources.

1884–1885 Critical Event 10

European Powers Accelerate the Partition of Africa

The Berlin Conference established rules for European territorial claims in Africa and accompanied a rapid expansion of colonial control over the continent.

Analysis: Colonial expansion tied African land, minerals and labour more tightly to overseas markets. Soon afterward, an imported cattle disease dramatically weakened many African rural economies.

1887–1890s Imp Event 11

Rinderpest Devastates African Cattle Herds

Rinderpest entered the Horn of Africa in 1887 and spread across much of the continent, destroying cattle herds and damaging pastoral and farming livelihoods.

Analysis: The loss of cattle weakened communities and increased dependence on colonial labour markets. Colonial economies increasingly redirected African and Asian production toward imperial trade.

Late 19th–Early 20th Century Major Event 12

Colonial India Is Reshaped for Imperial Trade

India exported raw materials and food products while importing growing quantities of British manufactured goods, with trade surpluses helping finance Britain's wider international obligations.

Analysis: Colonial trade integrated India into the global economy on unequal terms. Industrial economies were simultaneously developing new systems for producing goods on a much larger scale.

1913 Imp Event 13

Ford Introduces the Moving Assembly Line

Ford Motor Company successfully adopted the moving assembly line at its Highland Park plant, sharply increasing the speed and scale of automobile production.

Analysis: Assembly-line production became a model for mass manufacturing and lower unit costs. Soon, however, global production and trade were disrupted by the First World War.

Phase III — War, Boom and Depression [1914–1945]

1914–1918 Critical Event 14

First World War Disrupts the Global Economy

The war redirected factories toward military production, increased government borrowing and caused enormous human losses, particularly among working-age men.

Analysis: Pre-war patterns of trade, finance and labour were badly disrupted, while the United States became a stronger international creditor. Wartime pressures also contributed to the ending of Indian indentured recruitment.

12 March 1917 Imp Event 15

India Ends Indentured Emigration

The Government of India stopped emigration under the indenture system, after sustained criticism of recruitment practices and labour conditions overseas.

Analysis: The decision ended a major colonial mechanism for supplying plantation labour, although existing contracts took time to expire. After the war, global economic growth increasingly centred on mass production, consumer credit and American finance.

1920s Major Event 16

Mass Consumption and International Lending Expand

Mass production supported rising consumer purchases in the United States, while American loans and investment became increasingly important to European and international finance.

Analysis: Credit helped sustain growth but also increased financial interdependence and vulnerability. When lending and demand contracted, the downturn rapidly crossed national borders.

1929–1933 Critical Event 17

The Great Depression Becomes a Global Crisis

Beginning in 1929, falling production, banking failures, unemployment and declining international trade turned a severe downturn into a worldwide economic depression.

Analysis: Global interdependence transmitted falling demand and financial distress between countries. Commodity-producing colonies such as India were hit especially hard by collapsing agricultural prices.

1928–1934 Major Event 18

Depression Deepens Rural Distress in India

Indian exports, imports and agricultural prices fell sharply, reducing peasant incomes while many fixed revenue and debt obligations remained difficult to meet.

Analysis: The crisis showed how deeply colonial India depended on international commodity markets. The instability of the interwar economy later shaped plans for a more regulated postwar monetary system.

1939–1945 Critical Event 19

Second World War Transforms Global Economic Power

The war caused immense destruction in Europe and Asia while further strengthening the economic position of the United States relative to many older industrial powers.

Analysis: Governments wanted to avoid another unstable interwar economy after the conflict. Planning for a new international financial framework therefore began before the war had ended.

Phase IV — Bretton Woods and Decolonisation [1944–1970]

1–22 July 1944 Critical Event 20

Bretton Woods Conference Designs a New Economic Order

Delegates from 44 countries met at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, and agreed on the framework that created the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

Analysis: The agreement aimed to support monetary stability, reconstruction and expanding international trade after the war. Its institutions soon began operating within a fixed exchange-rate system centred on the US dollar.

1946–1947 Imp Event 21

World Bank and IMF Begin Operations

The World Bank opened for business in 1946 and the IMF began financial operations in 1947, becoming central institutions of the postwar international economic system.

Analysis: The Bretton Woods framework helped stabilise currencies and finance reconstruction and development. Its role expanded as colonial empires dissolved and many newly independent states entered the world economy.

1945–1960s Major Event 22

Decolonisation Creates New Independent Economies

Across Asia and Africa, former colonies gained independence and sought faster development while confronting poverty, weak infrastructure and trade structures inherited from colonial rule.

Analysis: Political independence did not automatically produce equal influence in global trade and finance. Developing countries increasingly coordinated their economic demands through collective organisations.

15 June 1964 Imp Event 23

Group of 77 Is Established

Seventy-seven developing countries formed the G-77 at the first UN Conference on Trade and Development to promote their collective economic interests.

Analysis: The G-77 sought a stronger voice for developing states in trade, development and international finance. These demands became more important as the original Bretton Woods exchange-rate system came under pressure.

Phase V — From Fixed Rates to Modern Globalisation [1971 Onward]

1971–1973 Critical Event 24

The Bretton Woods Fixed-Rate System Breaks Down

The United States suspended dollar convertibility into gold in August 1971, and by March 1973 the major industrial currencies were largely floating against one another.

Analysis: The collapse ended the fixed exchange-rate structure designed in 1944 while the IMF and World Bank continued to operate. Developing countries simultaneously pressed for changes in the wider rules of the world economy.

1 May 1974 Imp Event 25

UN Adopts the New International Economic Order Declaration

The UN General Assembly adopted a declaration and programme calling for a more equitable international economic system, including stronger sovereignty over resources and improved development opportunities.

Analysis: The initiative reflected developing countries' dissatisfaction with unequal influence in global economic institutions and markets. Meanwhile, multinational production networks were beginning to reorganise where goods were manufactured.

Late 1970s–1990s Major Event 26

Production Networks Shift Toward Asia

Multinational companies increasingly located manufacturing in lower-cost Asian economies, while improvements in transport, communication and finance made cross-border production easier to coordinate.

Analysis: Production itself became spread across countries rather than simply finished goods being traded between them. This helped shape the highly interconnected form of globalisation familiar today.