The Making of a Global world CBSE Class 10 Notes | History

The Making of a Global world

Part-I

The Pre-Modern World

             The making of the global world has a long history – of trade, of migration, of people in search of work, the movement of capital, and much else. From ancient times, travelers, traders, priests and pilgrims travelled vast distances for knowledge, opportunity and spiritual fulfillment, or to escape persecution. They carried goods, money, values, skills, ideas, inventions and even germs and diseases. The long-distance spread of disease-carrying germs may be traced as far back as the seventh century. By the thirteenth century it had become an unmistakable link.

Silk Routes Link the World

(i)            The silk routes are a good example of trade and cultural links between distant parts of the world. The name ‘silk routes’ points to the importance of  west-bound Chinese silk cargoes along this route.

(ii)           Historian have indentified several silk cargoes, over land by sea, knitting together vast regions of Asia, and linking Asia with Europe and northern Africa. They have existed since before the Christian Era and thrived almost till the 15th century.

(iii)         The Chinese pottery also travelled the same route, as did textiles and spices from India and Southeast Asia. In return, precious metals – gold and silver – flowed from Europe to Asia.

(iv)          Trade and cultural exchange always went hand in hand. Early Christian missionaries almost certainly travelled this route to Asia, as did early Muslim preachers a few centuries later.

Food Travels: Spaghetti and potato

(i)            Food offers many examples of long-distance cultural exchange. Traders and travellers introduced new crops to the land they travelled.

(ii)           It is believed that noodles travelled west from China to become spaghetti. Or, perhaps Arab traders took pasta to fifth-century Sicily, an island now in Italy.

(iii)         Many of our common foods such as potatoes, soya, groundnuts, maize, tomatoes, chillies, sweet potatoes, and so on were not known to our ancestors until about five centuries ago. These foods were only introduced in Europe and Asia after Christopher Columbus accidentally discovered the vast continent that would later become known as the Americas.

(iv)          In fact, many of our common foods came from America’s original inhabitants-the American Indians.

(v)           Europe’s poor began to eat better and live longer with the introduction of the humble potato. Ireland’s poorest peasants became so dependent on potatoes that when disease destroyed the potato crop in the mid-1840s, hundreds of thousands died of starvation.

Conquest, Disease and Trade

(i)            The pre-modern world shrank greatly in the sixteenth century after European sailors found a sea route to Asia and also successfully crossed the western ocean to America.

(ii)           The Indian subcontinent was central to these flows and a crucial point in their networks. The entry of the Europeans helped expand or redirect some of these flows towards Europe.

(iii)         From the sixteenth century, America’s vast lands and abundant crops and minerals began to transform trade and lives everywhere.

(iv)          Precious metals, particularly silver, from mines located in present day Peru and Mexico also enhanched Europe’s wealth and financed its trade with Asia.

(v)           The Portuguese and Spanish conquest and colonisation of America was decisively under way by the mid-sixteenth century.

(vi)          The most powerful weapon of the Spanish conquerors was not a conventional military weapon at all. It was the germs such as those of smallpox that they carried on their person. Because of their long isolation, America’s original inhabitants had no immunity against these diseases that came from Europe. Smallpox in particular proved a deadly killer. Once introduced, it spread deep into the continent, ahead even of any Europeans reaching there. It killed and decimated whole communities, paving the way for conquest.

(vii)        Until the nineteenth century, poverty and hunger were common in Europe. Cities were crowded and deadly diseases were widespread. Religious conflicts were common, and religious dissenters were persecuted. Thousands therefore fled Europe for America.

(viii)       Until well into the eighteenth century, China and India were among the world’s richest countries. They were also preeminent in Asian trade. However, from the fifteenth century, China is said to have restricted overseas contacts and retreated into isolation. China’s reduced role and the rising importance of the Americas gradually moved the centre of world trade, westwards. Europe now emerged as the centre of world trade.

The Nineteenth Century (1815-1914)

       The world changed profoundly in the nineteenth century. Economists identify three types of movement or ‘flow’ within international economic exchanges. The first is the flow of trade which in the nineteenth century referred largely 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.

A World Economy Takes Shape

(i)            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 agricultural products went up, pushing up food grain 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 dwellers forced the abolition of the Corn Laws.

(ii)           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 unable 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 overseas.

(iii)         As food prices fell, consumption in Britain rose. From the mid-nineteenth century, faster industrial growth in Britain also led to higher incomes, and therefore more food imports. Around the world-in  Eastern Europe, Russia, America and Australia-lands were cleared and food production expanded to meet the British demand.

(iv)          Railways were needed to link the agricultural regions to the ports. New harbours had to be built and old ones expanded to ship the new cargoes. People had to settle on the lands to bring them under cultivation. This meant building homes and settlements. All these activities in turn required capital and labour. Capital flowed from financial centres such as London. The demand for labour in places where labour was in short supply – as in America and Australia – led to more migration.

(v)           All over the world some 150 million are estimated to have left their homes, crossed oceans and vast distances over land in search of a better future.

(vi)          By 1890, a global agricultural economy had taken shape, accompanied by complex changes in labour movement patterns, capital flows, ecologies and technology.

(vii)        Some of this dramatic change, though on a smaller scale, occurred closer home in west Punjab. Here the British Indian government built a network of irrigation canals to transform semi-desert wastes into fertile agricultural lands that could grow wheat and cotton for export. The Canal Colonies, as the areas irrigated by the new canals were called, were settled by peasants from other parts of Punjab.

(viii)       A similar story can be told for cotton, the cultivation of which expanded worldwide to feed British textile mills or rubber.

(ix)          Nearly 60 per cent of this trade comprised ‘primary products’ – that is , agricultural products such as wheat and cotton, and minerals such as coal.

Role of Technology

(i)            Colonisation stimulated new investments and improvements in transport: faster railways, lighter wagons and larger ships helped move food more cheaply and quickly from far away farms to final markets.

(ii)           The trade in meat offers a good example of this connected process . Till the 1870s, animals were shipped live from America to Europe and then slaughtered when they arrived there. With the development of a new technology, namely, refrigerated ships, which enabled the transport of perishable foods over long distances.

(iii)         Now animals were slaughtered for food at the starting point – in America, Australia or New Zealand – and then transported to Europe as frozen meat. This reduced shipping costs and lowered meat prices in Europe.

Late nineteenth-century Colonialism

 (i)            In many parts of the world, the expansion of trade and a closer relationship with the world economy also meant a loss of freedoms and livelihoods.

(ii)           European conquests produced many painful economic, social and ecological changes through which the colonised societies were brought into the economy.

(iii)         In 1885 the big European powers met in Berlin to complete the carving up of Africa between them.

(iv)          Britain and France made vast additions to their overseas territories in the late nineteenth century. Belgium and Germany became new colonial powers. The US also became a colonial power in the late 1890s by taking over some colonies earlier held by Spain.

Rinderpest, or the Cattle Plague

 (i)            In Africa, in the 1890s, a fast-spreading disease of cattle plague or rinderpest had a terrifying impact on people’s livelihoods and the local economy.

(ii)           This is a good example and it shows how in this era of conquest even a disease affecting cattle reshaped the lives and fortunes of thousands of people and their relations with the rest of the world.

(iii)         Africa had abundant land and a relatively small population. For centuries, land and livestock sustained African livelihoods and people rarely worked for a wage.

(iv)          In the late nineteenth century, Europeans were attracted to Africa due to its vast resources of land and minerals. Europeans came to Africa hoping to establish plantations and mines to produce crops and minerals for export to Europe. But there was an unexpected problem – a shortage of labour willing to work for wages.

(v)           Employers used many methods to recruit and retain labour. Heavy taxes were imposed which could be paid only by working for wages on plantations and mines. Inheritance laws were changed so that peasants were displaced from land: only one member of a family was allowed to inherit land, as a result of which the others were pushed into the labour market. Mineworkers were also confined in compounds and not allowed to move about freely.

(vi)          Then came rinderpest, a devastating cattle disease.Rinderpest arrived in Africa in the late 1880s. It was carried by infected cattle imported from British Asia to feed the Italian soldiers invading Eritrea in East Africa. Entering Africa in the east, rinderpest moved west ‘like forest fire’, reaching Africa’s Atlantic coast in 1892. It reached the Cape (Africa’s southernmost tip) five years later. Along the way rinderpest killed 90 per cent of the cattle.

(vii)        The loss of cattle destroyed African livelihoods. Planters, mine owners and colonial governments now successfully monopolised what scarce cattle resources remained, to strengthen their power and to force Africans into the labour market. Control over the scarce resources of cattle enabled European colonisers to conquer and subdue Africa.

Indentured Labour Migration from India

(i)            In the nineteenth century, hundreds of thousands of Indian and Chinese labourers went to work on plantations , in mines, and in road and railway construction projects around the world.

(ii)           In India, indentured labourers were hired under contracts which promised return travel to India after they had worked five years on their employer’s plantation.

(iii)         In the mid-nineteenth century eastern Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, central India & dry districts of Tamil Nadu experienced many changes-cottage industries declined, land rents rose, lands were cleared for mines and plantations. All this affected the lives of the poor: they failed to pay their rents, became deeply indebted and were forced to migrate in search of work.

(iv)          The main destinations of Indian indentured migrants were the Caribbian islands (mainly Trinidad, Guyana and Surinam), Mauritius and Fiji. Closer home, Tamil migrants went to Ceylon and Malaya.

(v)           Recruitment was done by agents engaged by employers and paid a small commission.  Agents also tempted the prospective migrants by providing false information about final destinations, modes of travel, the nature of the work, and living and even told that they were to embark on a long sea voyage.

(vi)          Nineteenth-century indenture has been described as a ‘new system of slavery’. On arrival at the plantation, labourers found conditions to be different from what they had imagined. Living and working conditions were harsh, and there were few legal rights.

(vii)        But workers discovered their own ways of surviving. Many of them escaped into the wilds, though if caught they faced severe punishment. Others developed new forms of individual and collective self-expression, blending different culture forms, old and new.

(viii)       Most indentured workers stayed on after their contracts ended, or returned to their new homes after a short spell in India. Consequently, there are large communities of people of Indian descent in these countries.

(ix)          From the 1900s India’s nationalist leaders began opposing the system of indentured labour migration as abusive and cruel. It was abolished in 1921.

Indian Enterpreneurs Abroad

(i)            Growing food and other crops for the world market required capital.

(ii)           Shikaripuri Shroffs and Nattukottai Chettiars. They were amongst the many groups of bankers and traders who financed export agriculture in Central and Southeast Asia, using either their own funds or those borrowed from European banks. They had a sophisticated system to transfer money over large distance, and even developed indigenous forms of corporate organisation.

(iii)         Hyderabadi Sindhi traders, however, ventured beyond European colonies. From the 1860s they established flourishing emporia at busy ports worldwide, selling local and imported curios to tourists whose numbers were beginning to swell, thanks to the development of safe and comfortable passenger vessels.

Indian Trade, Colonialism and the Global system

(i)            Historically, fine cottons produced in India were exported to Europe. With industrialisation, British cotton manufacture began to expand, and industrialists pressurised the government to restrict cotton imports and protect local industries. Tariffs were imposed on cloth imports into Britain. Consequently, the inflow of fine Indian cotton began to decline.

(ii)           British manufacturers also began to seek overseas markets for their cloth. Excluded from the British market by tariff barriers, Indian textiles now faced stiff competition in other international markets.

(iii)         While exports of manufactures declined rapidly, exports of raw materials increased equally fast from India. Indigo used for dyeing cloth was another important export for many decades.

(iv)          Over the nineteenth century, British manufactures flooded the Indian market. Food grain and raw material exports from India to Britain and the rest of the world increased. But the value of British exports to India was much higher than the value of British imports from India. Thus Britain had a ‘trade surplus’ with India. Britain used this surplus to balance its trade deficits with other countries – that is, with countries from which Britain was importing more than it was selling to. This is how a multilateral settlement system works-it allows one country’s deficit with another country to be settled by its surplus with a third country. By helping Britain balance its deficits, India played a crucial role in the late-nineteenth – century world economy.

(v)           Britain’s trade surplus in India also helped pay the so-called ‘home charge’ that included private remittances home by British officials and traders, interest payments on India’s external debt, and pensions of British officials in India.

Part-II

The Inter War Economy

Wartime Transformations

(i)            The First World War, as you know, was fought between two power blocs. On the one side were the Allies – Britain, France and Russia (later joined by the US); and on the opposite side were the Central Powers – Germany, Austria – Hungary and Ottoman Turkey.

(ii)           The fighting involved the world’s leading industrial nations which now harnessed the vast powers of modern industry to inflict the greatest possible destruction on their enemies.

(iii)         This was thus the first modern industrial war. It saw the use of machine guns, tanks, aircraft, chemical weapons, etc. on a massive scale.

(iv)          In this war most of the killed and maimed were men of working age. These deaths and injuries reduced the able-bodied workforce in Europe. With fewer numbers within the family, houeshold incomes declined after the war.

(v)           During the war, industries were restructured to produce war-related goods. Entire societies were also reorganised for war-as men went to battle, women stepped in to undertake jobs that earlier only men were expected to do.

(vi)          Britain borrowed large sums of money from US banks as well as the US public. Thus the war transformed the US from being an international debtor to an international creditor. In other  words, at the war’s end, the US and its citizens owned more overseas assets than foreign governments.

Post War Recovery

(i)            Post-war economic recovery proved difficult. Britain, which was the world’s leading economy in the pre-war period, in particular faced a prolonged crisis. After the war Britain found it difficult to recapture its earlier position of dominance in the Indian market, and to compete with Japan internationally. At the end of war Britain was burdened with huge external debts.

(ii)           When the war boom ended, production contracted and unemployment increased.

(iii)         Before the war, eastern Europe was a major supplier of wheat in the world market. When this supply was disturpted during the war, wheat production in Canada, America and Australia expanded dramatically. But once the war was over, production in eastern Europe revived and created a glut in wheat output. Grain prices fell, rural incomes declined, and farmers fell deeper into debt.

Rise of Mass Production and Consumption

(i)            After a short period of economic trouble in the years after the war, the US economy resumed its strong growth in the early 1920s.

(ii)           One important feature of the US economy of the 1920s was mass production. The move towards mass production had begun in the late nineteenth century, but in the 1920s it became a characteristic feature of industrial production. A well-known pioneer of mass production in the U.S. was the car manufacturer Henry Ford.

(iii)         He realised that the ‘assembly line’ method would allow a faster and cheaper way of producing vehicles. The assembly line forced workers to repeat a single task mechanically and continuosly-such as fitting a particular part to the car-at a pace dictated by the conveyor belt. The T – Model Ford was the world’s first mass-produced car.

(iv)          Fordist industrial practices soon spread in the US. They were also widely copied in Europe in the 1920s. Mass production lowered costs and prices of engineered goods.

(v)           The housing and consumer boom of the 1920s created the basis of prosperity in the US. Large investments in housing and household goods seemed to create a cycle of higher employment and incomes.

(vi)          In 1923, the US resumed exporting capital to the rest of the world and became the largest overseas lender. US imports and capital exports also boosted European recovery and world trade and income growth over the next six years.

The Great Depression

(i)            The Great Depression began around 1929 and lasted till the mid- 1930s. During this period most parts of the world experienced catastrophic declines in production, employment, incomes and trade.

(ii)           The depression was caused by a combination of several factors.

                First agricultural overprodution remained a problem, this was made worse by falling agriculture prices. This worsened the glut in the market, pushing down prices even further. Farm produce rotted for a lack of buyers.

                Second: in the mid – 1920s, many countries financed their investments through loans from the US. While it was often extremely easy to raise loans in the US when the going was good, US overseas lenders panicked at the first sign of trouble. In the first half of 1928, US Overseas loans amounted to over $ 1 billion. A year later it was one quarter of that amount. Countries that depended crucially on US loans now faced an acute crisis.

(iii)         In Europe it led to the failure of some major banks and the collapse of currencies such as the British pound sterling. In Latin America and elsewhere it intensified the slump in agricultural and raw material prices. The US attempt to protect its economy in the depression by doubling import duties also dealt another severe blow to world trade.

(iv)          With the fall in prices and the prospect of a depression, US banks had also slashed domestic lending and called back loans. Farms could not sell their harvests, households were runied, and businesses collapsed.

 (v)           Unable to recover investments, collect loans and repay depositors, thousands of banks went bankrupt and were forced to close.

(vi)          By 1935, a modest economic recovery was under way in most industrial countries. But the Great Depression’s wider effects on society, politics and international relations, and on people’s minds, proved more enduring.

India and the Great Depression

(i)            The tremors of a crisis in one part of the world were quickly relayed to other parts, affecting lives, economies and societies worldwide.

(ii)           The depression immediately affected Indian trade. India’s exports and imports nearly halved between 1928 and 1934. As international prices crashed, prices in India also plunged.

(iii)         Peasants and farmers suffered more than urban dwellers. Though agricultural prices fell sharply, the colonial government refused to reduce revenue demands. Peasants producing for the world market were the worst hit.

(iv)          The jute producers of Bengal grew raw jute that was processed in factories for export in the form of gunny bags. But as gunny exports collapsed, the price of raw jute crashed more than 60 per cent. Peasants who borrowed in the hope of better times or to increase output in the hope of higher incomes faced ever lower prices, and fell deeper and deeper into debt.

(v)           Across India, peasant’s indebtedness increased. They used up their savings, mortgaged lands, and sold whatever jewellery and precious metals they had to meet their expenses. In these depression years, India became an exporter of precious metals, notably gold.

(vi)          Rural India was thus seething with unrest when Mahatma Gandhi launched the Civil Disobedience Movement at the height of the depression in 1931.

(vii)        The depression proved less grim for urban India. Because of falling prices, those with fixed incomes – say town  – dwelling  landowners who received rents and middle-class salaried employees-now found themselves better off. Everything cost less. Industrial investments also grew as the government extended tariff protection to industries, under the pressure of nationalist opinion.

Rebuilding a world Economy : The Post-war Era

 (i)            The Second World War broke out a mere 20 years after the end of the First World War.

(ii)           It was fought between the Axis powers (mainly Nazi Germany, Japan and Italy) and the Allies (Britain, France, the Soviet Union and the US). It was a war waged for six years on many fronts, in many places, over land, on sea, in the air.

(iii)         Vast parts of Europe and Asia were devastated, and several cities were destroyed by aerial bombardment or relentless artilary attacks. The war caused an immense amount of economic devastation and social disruption. Reconstruction promised to be long and difficult.

(iv)          Two crucial influences shaped post-war reconstruction. The first was the US’s emergence as the dominant economic, political and military power in the Western world. The second was the dominance of the Soviet Union. It had made huge sacrifices to defeat Nazi Germany, and transformed itself from a backward agricultural country into a world power during the very years when the capitalist world was trapped in the Great Deperession.

Post-war Settlement and the Bretton Woods Institutions

(i)            Economists and politicians drew two key lessons from inter-war economic experiences. First, an industrial society based on mass production cannot be sustained without mass consumption. But to ensure mass consumption, there was a need for high and stable incomes. Incomes could not be stable if employment was unstable. Thus stable incomes also required steady, full employment.

(ii)           The second lesson related to a country’s economic links with the outside world. The goal of full employment could only be achieved if governments had power to control flows of goods, capital and labour.

(iii)         The main aim of the post-war international economic system was to preserve economic stability and full employment in the industrial worlds. Its framework was agreed upon at the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference held in July 1944 at Bretton Woods in New Hampshire, USA.

(iv)          The Bretton Woods conference established the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to deal with external surplus and deficits of its member nations.

(v)           The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (popularly known as the World Bank) was set up to finance post-war reconstruction. The IMF and the World Bank are referred to as the Bretton Woods institutions or sometimes the Bretton Woods twins. The post-war international economic system is also often described as the Bretton Woods system.

(vi)          Decision-making in these institutions is controlled by the Western industrial powers. The US has an effective right of veto over key IMF and World Bank decisions.

(vii)        The international monetary system is the system linking national currencies and monetary system. The Bretton Woods system was based on fixed exchange rates. In this system, national currencies, for example the Indian rupee, were pegged to the dollar at a fixed exchange rate. The dollar itself was anchored to gold at a fixed price of $ 35 per ounce of gold.

The Early Post-war Years

(i)            The Bretton Woods system inaugurated an era of unprecedented growth of trade and incomes for the Western industrial nations and Japan.

(ii)           The growth was also mostly stable, without large fluctuations. For much of this period the unemployment rate, for example, averaged less than 5 per cent in most industrial countries.

(iii)         These decades also saw the worldwide spread of technology and enterprise. Developing countries were in a hurry to catch up with the advanced industrial countries.

Decolonisation and Independence

(i)            Colonies in Asia and Africa emerged as free, independent nations after World War II. They were, however, overburdened by poverty and a lack of resources, and their economies and societies were handicapped by long periods of colonial rule.

(ii)           The IMF and the World Bank were designed to meet the financial needs of the industrial countries. They were not equipped to cope with the challenge of poverty and lack of development in the former colonies.

(iii)         As Europe and Japan rapidly rebuilt their economies, they grew less dependent on the IMF and the World Bank. Thus from the late 1950s the Bretton Woods institutions began to shift their attention more towards developing countries.

(iv)          Newly independent countries facing urgent pressures to lift their populations out of poverty, they came under the guidance of international agencies dominated by the former colonial powers. Even after many years of decolonisation, the former colonial powers still controlled vital resources such as minerals and land in many of their former colonies.

(v)           At the same time, most developing countries did not benefit from the fast growth the Western economies experienced in the 1950s and 1960s. Therefore they organised themselves as a group – the Group of 77 (or G – 77) – to demand a new international economic order (NIEO). By the NIEO they meant a system that would give them real control over their natural resources, and better access for their manufactured goods in developed countries’ markets.

End of Bretton Woods and the Beginning of ‘Globalization’

(i)            From the 1960s the rising costs of its overseas involvements weakened the US’s finances and competitive strength. The US dollar now no longer commanded confidence as the world’s principal currency. It could not maintain its value in relation to gold. This eventully led to the collapse of the system of fixed exchange rates and the introduction of a system of floating exchange rates.

(ii)           Earlier, developing countries could turn to international institutions for loans and development assistance. But now they were forced to borrow from Western commercial banks and private lending institutions. This led to periodic debt crises in the developing world, and lower incomes and increased poverty, especially in Africa and Latin America.

(iii)         The industrial world was also hit by unemployment that began rising from the mid-1970s and remained high until the early 1990s. From the late 1970s MNCs also began to shift production operations to low-wage Asian countries.

(iv)          New economic policies in China and the collapse of the Soviet Union and Soviet-style communism in Eastern Europe brought many countries back into the fold of the world economy.

(v)           Wages were relatively low in countries like China. Thus they became attractive destinations for investment by foreign MNCs competing to capture world markets.

(vi)          The relocation of industry to low-wage countries stimulated world trade and capital flows. In the last two decades the world’s economic geography has been transformed as countries such as India, China and Brazil have undergone rapid economic transformation.

New Terms

(i)            Dissenter – One who refuses to accept established beliefs and practices.

(ii)           Indentured labour – A bonded labourer under contract to work for an employer for a specific amount of time, to pay off his passage to a new country or home.

(iii)         Tariff – Tax imposed on a country’s imports from the rest of the world. Tariffs are levied at the point of entry, i.e., at the border or the airport.

(iv)          Exchange rates – They link national currencies for purpose of international trade. There are broadly two kinds of exchange rates: fixed exchange rate and floating exchange rate.

(v)           Fixed exchange rates – When exchange rates are fixed and government intervene to prevent movement in them.

(vi)          Flexible or floating exchange rates – These rates fluctuate depending on demand and supply of currencies in foreign exchange markets, in principle without interference by government.

Add to your Knowledge

1.           In 19th century Europeans  considered imperialist expansion a very noble way of  ‘civilizing’ the backward people of the world. It was largely done by converting them to christianity.

2.           Between 16th 18th centuries, Spain stood as the biggest colonial power in the world. It occupied neraly the whole of South  America and Central America  and some parts of North America as well.

3.           Britain conquered Sri Lanka (Ceylon) from the Dutch.

4.           USA captured Philippines after defeating  Spain.

5.           Japan occupied Taiwan (Formosa) by defeating China.