How did global agricultural economy take shape by 1890?
Answers
i) Food and other products : Food and Other products started flowing from far away places. It was no longer grown by a peasant tilling his own land, but by an agricultural worker, perhaps recently arrived, who was now working on a large farm that only a generation ago. had perhaps been a forest.
(ii) Infrastructure : The food and other products being transported by railways bud: for that very purpose and by ships which were increasingly manned in these decades by low paid workers from southern Europe Asia Africa and the Caribbean Islands.
(iii) Raw materials : Indian farmers were producing raw cotton and other farm products to British industry. World trade between 1820 and 1914 multiplied about 25 to 40 times.
(iv) Scrapping of Corn Law : The scrapping of the Corn Laws laid the foundation of free trade. Now food could be imported or exported into Britain freely.
(v) Commercialisation of agriculture in colonies: The imperial countries took various steps to commercialise agriculture in their colonies. For example. British government built a network of irrigation canals to transform semi desert waste land of West Punjab into fertile agricultural land.
Examples of the global agricultural economy by 1890 were
1. Tea was exported from India to Britain.
2. Cotton was exported from countries like Egypt and USA to the textile mills of Britain.
3. Food grains like wheat was exported from countries like Argentina, Australia and USA to European countries