International business refers to business activities that take place across national frontiers. Though many people use the terms international business and international trade synonymously, the former is a much broader term.

In every society, people undertake various activities to satisfy their needs. These activities may be broadly classified into two groups - economic and non-economic.

Forms of business organisation refers to the types of organisations which differ in terms of ownership and management. The major forms of organisation include proprietorship, partnership, joint Hindu family business, cooperative society and company.

Organising is the process of defining and grouping activities and establishing authority relationships among them.

Staffing has been described as the managerial function of filling and keeping filled, the positions in an organisation structure. This is achieved by, first of all, identifying requirement of work force, followed by recruitment, selection, placement, promotion, appraisal and development of personnel, to fill the roles designed into the organisation structure.

Directing is a complex managerial function consisting of all the activities that are designed to encourage subordinates to work effectively. It includes supervision, motivation, communication and leading. The principles which guide effective directing may be classified as principles related to the purpose of directing and principles related to direction process.

Controlling is the process of ensuring that actual activities conform to planned activities.

Business finance: The money required for carrying out business activities is called business finance. Almost all business activities require some finance. Finance is needed to establish a business, to run it, to modernise it, to expand, and diversify it.

Financial Market is a market for creation and exchange of financial assets. It helps in mobilisation and channelising the savings into most productive uses. Financial markets also helps in price discovery and provide liquidity to financial assets.

In the traditional sense, the term ‘market’ refers to the place where buyers and sellers gather to enter into transactions involving the exchange of goods and services. But in modern marketing sense, it refers to a set of actual and potential buyers of a product or service.

From the point of consumers, consumer protection is important because consumers are ignorant, unorganised and exploited by sellers.

Management is the process of planning, organising, staffing, directing and controlling the enterprise resources efficiently and effectively for achieving the goals of the organisation. Effectiveness in management is concerned with doing the right task, completing activities and achieving goals. Efficiency means doing the task correctly and with minimum cost.

Principles of management are general guidelines, which can be used for conduct in work places under certain situations. They help managers to take and implement decisions.

The term business environment means the totality of all individuals, institutions and other forces that are outside a business but that potentially affect its performance.

Planning: Planning is deciding in advance what to do and how to do. It is one of the basic managerial functions. Planning therefore involves setting objectives and developing an appropriate course of action to achieve these objectives.

City life began in Mesopotamia, the land between the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers that is now part of the Republic of Iraq. Mesopotamian civilisation is known for its prosperity, city life, its voluminous and rich literature and its mathematics and astronomy.

Over the two millennia that followed the establishment of empires in Mesopotamia, various attempts at empire-building took place across the region and in the area to the west and east of it.

The term 'nomadic empires' can appear contradictory: nomads are arguably quintessential wanderers, organised in family assemblies with a relatively undifferentiated economic life and rudimentary systems of political organisation.

We have seen how, by the ninth century, large parts of Asia and America witnessed the growth and expansion of great empires - some nomadic, some based on well-developed cities and trading networks that centred on them.

From the fourteenth to the end of the seventeenth century, towns were growing in many countries of Europe. A distinct 'urban culture' also developed. Townspeople began to think of themselves as more 'civilised' than rural people. Towns - particularly Florence, Venice and Rome - became centres of art and learning.

This chapter recounts some aspects of the histories of the native peoples of America and Australia. Theme 8 described the history of the Spanish and Portuguese colonisation of South America.

East Asia at the beginning of the nineteenth century was dominated by China. The Qing dynasty, heir to a long tradition, seemed secure in its power, while Japan, a small island country, seemed to be locked in isolation. Yet, within a few decades China was thrown into turmoil unable to face the colonial challenge.

In this chapter we shall go on a long journey across a thousand years to read about philosophers and their attempts to understand the world they inhabited. We will also see how their ideas were compiled as oral and written texts as well as expressed in architecture and sculpture.

Women and men have travelled in search of work, to escape from natural disasters, as traders, merchants, soldiers, priests, pilgrims, or driven by a sense of adventure. Those who visit or come to stay in a new land invariably encounter a world that is different: in terms of the landscape or physical environment as well as customs, languages, beliefs and practices of people.

By the mid-first millennium CE the landscape of the subcontinent was dotted with a variety of religious structures - stupas, monasteries, temples.

Vijayanagara or "city of victory" was the name of both a city and an empire. The empire was founded in the fourteenth century. In its heyday it stretched from the river Krishna in the north to the extreme south of the peninsula.

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries about 85 per cent of the population of India lived in its villages. Both peasants and landed elites were involved in agricultural production and claimed rights to a share of the produce. This created relationships of cooperation, competition and conflict among them. The sum of these agrarian relationships made up rural society.

In this chapter you will see what colonial rule meant to those who lived in the countryside. You will meet the zamindars of Bengal, travel to the Rajmahal hills where the Paharias and the Santhals lived, and then move west to the Deccan.

Late in the afternoon of 10 May 1857, the sepoys in the cantonment of Meerut broke out in mutiny. It began in the lines of the native infantry, spread very swiftly to the cavalry and then to the city. The ordinary people of the town and surrounding villages joined the sepoys. The sepoys captured the bell of arms where the arms and ammunition were kept and proceeded to attack white people, and to ransack and burn their bungalows and property.

In the history of nationalism a single individual is often identified with the making of a nation. Thus, for example, we associate Garibaldi with the making of Italy, George Washington with the American War of Independence, and Ho Chi Minh with the struggle to free Vietnam from colonial rule. In the same manner, Mahatma Gandhi has been regarded as the ‘Father’ of the Indian nation.

The Indian Constitution, which came into effect on 26 January 1950, has the dubious distinction of being the longest in the world. But its length and complexity are perhaps understandable when one considers the country’s size and diversity. At Independence, India was not merely large and diverse, but also deeply divided.

The Harappan seal is possibly the most distinctive artefact of the Harappan or Indus valley civilisation. Made of a stone called steatite, seals like this one often contain animal motifs and signs from a script that remains undeciphered.

There were several developments in different parts of the subcontinent during the long span of 1,500 years following the end of the Harappan civilisation. This was also the period during which the Rigveda was composed by people living along the Indus and its tributaries.

In the previous chapter we saw that there were several changes in economic and political life between c. 600 BCE and 600 CE. Some of these changes influenced societies as well. For instance, the extension of agriculture into forested areas transformed the lives of forest dwellers; craft specialists often emerged as distinct social groups; the unequal distribution of wealth sharpened social differences.

Legislature, executive and judiciary are the three organs of government. Together, they perform the functions of the government, maintain law and order and look after the welfare of the people.

You have already studied the importance of elections and the method of election adopted in India. Legislatures are elected by the people and work on behalf of the people.

Many times, courts are seen only as arbitrators in disputes between individuals or private parties. But judiciary performs some political functions also. Judiciary is an important organ of the government.

Political maps of India have changed dramatically over the years. Boundaries of States have changed, names of States have changed, and the number of States has changed. When India became independent, we had a number of provinces that the British government had organised only for administrative convenience.

In a democracy, it is not sufficient to have an elected government at the centre and at the State level. It is also necessary that even at the local level, there should be an elected government to look after local affairs.

Just as we intuitively understand what love means even if we cannot explain all its different shades of meaning, we also have an intuitive understanding of justice even though we may not be able to define it precisely. In that sense justice is a lot like love.

A right is essentially an entitlement or a justified claim. It denotes what we are entitled to as citizens, as individuals and as human beings. It is something that we consider to be due to us; something that the rest of society must recognise as being a legitimate claim that must be upheld.

Citizenship has been defined as full and equal membership of a political community. In the contemporary world, states provide a collective political identity to their members as well as certain rights.

If we were to take a quick poll of what people commonly understand by the term nationalism we are likely to get responses which talk about patriotism, national flags, sacrificing for the country, and the like.

Though Jews faced discrimination for centuries throughout Europe, in the present state of Israel, Arab minorities, both Christian and Muslims, are excluded from social, political and economic benefits available to Jewish citizens. Subtle forms of discrimination also continue to persist against non-Christians in several parts of Europe.

What is a constitution? What are its functions? What role does it perform for a society? How does a constitution relate to our daily existence?

Have you ever played chess? What would happen if the black knight suddenly started moving straight rather than two and a half squares? Or, what would happen if in a game of cricket, there were no umpires? In any sport, we need to follow certain rules.

India was born in a very trying and challenging international context. The world had witnessed a devastating war and was grappling with issues of reconstruction; yet another attempt to establish an international body was underway; many new countries were emerging as a result of the collapse of colonialism; and most new nations were trying to come to terms with the twin challenges of welfare and democracy. Free India’s foreign policy reflected all these concerns in the period immediately after Independence.

Three decades after Independence, the people were beginning to get impatient. Their unease expressed itself in various forms. In the previous chapter, we have already gone through the story of electoral upheavals and political crisis. Yet that was not the only form in which popular discontent expressed itself. In the 1970s, diverse social groups like women, students, Dalits and farmers felt that democratic politics did not address their needs and demands.

1980s may be seen as a period of rising regional aspirations for autonomy, often outside the framework of the Indian Union. These movements frequently involved armed assertions by the people, their repression by the government, and a collapse of the political and electoral processes.

First the most crucial development of this period was the defeat of the Congress party in the elections held in 1989. The party that had won as many as 415 seats in the Lok Sabha in 1984 was reduced to only 197 in this election. The Congress improved its performance and came back to power soon after the mid-term elections held in 1991.