The Industrial Revolution, 1750–1914 · TEST YOURSELF
Industrial Revolution quiz: 8 questions
8 multiple-choice questions on The Industrial Revolution, 1750–1914, free to try here. Answer, then read the verdict: every answer is an argument, not a flashcard.
Robert Allen’s explanation of why the Industrial Revolution began in Britain rests mainly on —
Allen argues that inventors respond to prices. Where labour was dear and energy cheap, as in Britain, machines that replaced workers with coal earned their cost back fastest; in France, India or China they did not yet pay.
How did Parliament’s Calico Acts of 1700 and 1721 help the British cotton industry to grow?
The bans were meant to protect English wool, but they left a large market for cheap cotton cloth that Indian imports could no longer supply. British inventors set out to match Indian quality at a lower cost.
What made James Watt’s steam engine so much better than Thomas Newcomen’s?
Newcomen’s engine wasted fuel by heating and cooling one cylinder at every stroke. Watt’s separate condenser saved about three-quarters of the coal, which made steam worth using far from the coalfields.
Edwin Chadwick’s report of 1842 found that the average age at death of labourers and their families in Manchester was about —
About 17, against 38 for professional families in Manchester and 38 for labourers in rural Rutland. The averages were pulled down by the deaths of infants and children in crowded, unsewered towns.
What did the Luddites of 1811–13 mainly target?
Knitters broke the frames of employers who paid low rates and spared the rest, and croppers attacked mills installing shearing frames. Eric Hobsbawm called this collective bargaining by riot.
What was the Zollverein, founded in 1834?
Led by Prussia, the Zollverein joined eighteen states and about 23 million people into one market. On the map its dashed outline grows until it covers almost all of the future German Empire.
How did the Meiji state launch Japan’s industrialisation?
The state took the first risks and set the direction, then handed most factories to firms such as Mitsui and Mitsubishi. Private mills like the Osaka Spinning Company carried the growth forward.
By Paul Bairoch’s estimates, what share of the world’s manufactured goods did Europe and the United States make in 1900?
About 85 per cent, up from under a quarter in 1750, while China’s share fell from about a third to about 6 per cent. Historians call this shift the Great Divergence.
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