Questions and CORRECT Answers
1. What was revolutionary about the Industrial Revolution? - CORRECT ANSWER - 1. IR
was the most significant change since the Agricultural Revolution. Human ways of life were
fundamentally altered.
2. The Industrial Revolution created new classes of people in society.
3. It created new work patterns.
4. It enormously increased the output of goods and services because of a completely
unprecedented jump in the capacities of human societies to produce wealth.
5. It was driven by a culture of innovation, a widespread and almost obsessive belief that things
could be improved endlessly.
2. What was common to the process of industrialization elsewhere, and in what ways did it vary
from place to place? - CORRECT ANSWER - In the process of industrialization
everywhere, new technologies and sources of energy generated vast increases in production, and
unprecedented urbanization took place.
Class structures changed as aristocrats, artisans and peasants declined as classes, while the
middle classes and factory-working class grew in numbers and social prominence.
Middle-class women generally withdrew from paid labor, while working-class women sought to
do so after marriage.
Working women usually received lower wages than their male counterparts, had difficulty
joining unions, and were subject to charges that they were taking jobs from men.
Working-class frustration and anger gave rise to trade unions and socialist movements.
The pace and timing of the Industrial Revolution varied by country. Other variables include the
size and shape of major industries, the role of the state, the political expression of social conflict,
and the relative influence of Marxism.
3. What did humankind gain from the Industrial Revolution, and what did it lose? - CORRECT
ANSWER - -Gains: there was an enormous increase in the output of goods and services
because of an unprecedented jump in the capacities of human societies to produce wealth;
unprecedented technological innovation; new sources of power; and new employment
opportunities for participants.
, - Losses: the destruction of some older ways of life; the end of some older methods of
production; miserable working and living conditions for many in the laboring classes; new and
sometimes bitter social- and class-based conflicts; and environmental damage.
4. In what ways might the Industrial Revolution be understood as a global rather than simply a
European phenomenon? - CORRECT ANSWER - The Industrial Revolution rapidly
spread beyond Europe and was easily adopted
Europe's initial industrialization was influenced by its new position as a hub of the most
extensive network of exchange in the world, by its extraction of wealth from the Americas, and
by its dominance of the growing market for goods in the Americas.
Even areas that did not industrialize were affected by the Industrial Revolution, such as Latin
America, where the economy was defined by exports of raw materials to supply the factories and
the workforces of industrial countries in Europe and the United States.
In what respects did the roots of the Industrial Revolution lie within Europe? In what ways did
that transformation have global roots? - CORRECT ANSWER - Some patterns of
European internal development favored innovation.
European rulers had an unusual alliance with the merchant class.
Europe was at the center of the most varied exchange network.
The Americas provided raw materials, silver, and foods for Europe.
Contact with culturally different peoples encouraged change and innovation.
Other parts of the world (like China and the Islamic world) had times of great technological and
scientific flourishing
Other parts of the world (China, Japan, and India) had developed market-based economies by the
eighteenth century.
What was distinctive about Britain that may help to explain its status as the breakthrough point
of the Industrial Revolution? - CORRECT ANSWER - Britain was the most highly
commercialized of europe's larger countries
Agricultural innovations (crop rotation, selective breeding of animals, lighter plows, and higher
yielding seeds), increased agricultural output, kept food prices low, and freed up labor from the
country
Guilds had disappeared allowing the employers to run their manufacturing as they saw fit