Download Reading Questions Chapter Seventeen Pages 827 – 860 1. In what

Reading Questions
Chapter Seventeen
Pages 827 – 860
1. In what respects did the roots of the Industrial Revolution line within Europe?
 Because Europe’s political system, which was composed of many small and
highly competitive states, favored innovation.
 The relative newness of European states and their need for revenue pushed them
into an alliance with their merchant classes, resulting in an unusual degree of
freedom from state control and a higher social status for merchants than in more
established civilizations.
2. In what ways did the transformation of Industrial Revolution have global roots?
 Europe after 1500 became the hub of the largest and most varied network of
exchange in the world, which generated extensive change and innovation and
stimulating European commerce.
 The conquest of the Americas allowed Europeans to draw on world resources
provided a growing market for European machine produced goods.
3. What was distinctive about Britain that may help to explain its status as the
breakthrough point of the Industrial Revolution? Let’s rewrite this question! What
advantages did Britain have that contributed to it being the first nation to
industrialize?
 The most highly commercialized of Europe’s large countries.
 A rapidly growing population provided a ready supply of industrial workers with
few alternatives available to them.
 Aristocrats had long been interested in commerce.
 A large merchant fleet by Royal Navy which helped encourage commerce around
the world.
 Political life promoted commercialization and economic innovation through a
policy of religious tolerance, which remove barriers against religious dissenters
with technical skills.
 Government favored men of business with;
o Tariffs
o Laws that made it easier to form companies and to forbid workers unions
o Infrastructural investments
o Patent Laws
o Checks on royal authority provided a freer arena private enterprise.
 A ready supply of coal and iron ore, located close to each other and with easy
reach of major industrial centers.
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An Island location protected it from the kind of invasions that so many
continental European states experienced during the era of the French Revolution.
A relatively fluid society allow for adjustments in the face of social changes
without widespread revolution.
4. How did the Industrial Revolution transformed British society?
 The landowning aristocrats declined as a class while elite urban groups grew in
wealth and political power.
 Rules retain their social status and found opportunities in the Empire.
 The upper middle class, composed of wealthy factory and mine owners, bankers,
and merchants, benefited most from the Industrial Revolution, and assimilated
into aristocratic life at the top of British society.
 Smaller business, doctors, lawyers, engineers, teachers, journalists, scientists, and
other professionals became prominent as a social group and develop their own
values in sized ideas thrift and hard work, rigid morality, and cleanliness.
 As industrial, matured, it gave rise to a sizable lower middle-class; people
employed in growing service sector as, salespeople, bank tellers, hotel staff,
secretaries, telephone operators, and police officers. This distinguished itself from
working class because they did not participate in manual labor.
 Laboring classes lived in overcrowded, poorly serviced urban environments; they
labored in industrial factories were new and monotonous work, formed under
constant supervision design to enforce work discipline, replace the more varied
work of earlier periods. Over time laboring classes developed new forms of
sociability, including “friends societies” that provided insurance against sickness,
funeral cost, and the opportunity for a social life. Over time (classes also saw
greater political dissipation, organized after 1824 into trade unions to improve
their conditions, and develop socialist ideas that challenge the assumption of
capitalist society.
 Farmers and those who labored in agriculture declined prominence.
5. How did Britain’s middle-class change during the 19th century?
 Middle-class society was composed of political liberals who favored
constitutional government, private property, free trade, and social reform within
limits.
 Main value of the culture was “respectability,” the time that combines notions of
social status and virtuous behavior.
 Women were cast as homemakers, wives, and mothers and charged with creating
an emotional haven for their men. They were also moral center of family life and
the educators of respectability, as well as the managers consumption in a setting
in which shopping became a central activity. An “ideology of domesticity”
defined a home in charitable activities is the proper sphere for women.
6. How did Marx understand the Industrial Revolution?
 Marks saw the Industrial Revolution is a story of class struggle between the
oppressor (the bourgeoisie) and the oppressed (the proletariat).
 According to Marx, capitalist societies could never eliminate poverty, because
private property, competition, and class hostilities prevented those societies from
distributing all the wealth to the workers labor who had created that wealth.
 Marx predicted the eventual collapse of capitalism in a working-class revolution.
Marx look forward to a communist future in which the proletariat share all the
wealth of society.
7. In what ways did Marx’s ideas have an impact in the industrializing world 19th
century?
 Marx’s ideas were echoed in the later decades of the 19th century among more
radical trade unionist and some middle-class intellectuals in Britain, even more so
in Germany.
 The British working-class movement was not revolutionary, when working-class
political party known as the Labour Party was established in the 1890s, it
advocated performance program at peaceful democratic transition to socialism,
largely rejecting the class struggle and revolutionary Marxism.
8. What were the differences between industrialized nation in the United States and that
in Russia?
United States;
 An expanding democracy.
 Economic change came from free farmers, workers, and businessman who sought
new opportunities operated in the political system that gave them a large degree
of expression.
 Working-class consciousness factory laborers did not develop as quickly did not
become as radical, in part because workers were treated better and had more
outlets to grievances.
Russia;
 An absolute monarchy, in which the state’s highest control over individuals and
society.
 Change often was initiated by the state in its continuing effort to catch up with
more powerful and innovated states of Europe.
 Industrialization was associated with violent social revolution through which a
socialist party, inspired by the teachings of Karl Marx, was able to seize power.
9. Why did Marxist socialism not take root in the United States?
 The relative conservatism of American union organizations.
 The immense religious, ethnic, and racial divisions of American society
undermined class solidarity of American workers and made it far more difficult to
sustain class oriented political parties and a socialist labor movement.
 A remarkable economic growth generated on average a higher standard of living
for American workers and their European counterparts.
 There was a higher level of home ownership among U.S. workers.
 By 1910, a large group of white-collar workers in sales, services, and offices
outnumbered factory laborers.
10. Factors contributed to making a revolutionary situation in Russia by the beginning of
the 20th century?
 State-directed industrialization concentrated in a few major cities led to the
emergence of a modern and educated middle-class of businessmen and
professionals, many of whom rejected strongly the deep conservatism of czarist
Russia and salt a greater role in political life.
 Russian workers developed a radical class consciousness, based on harsh
conditions in the absence of any legal help grievances.
 A small number of educated Russians found in Marxist socialism a way of
understanding the changes they witnessed daily and hope for the future and
revolutionary upheaval of workers.
 The Tsar’s reforms after the failed leading to 1905 revolution did not tame
working-class radicalism or bring social stability to Russia.
 Revolutionary groups published templates and newspapers, organize trade unions,
and spread their message among workers and peasants.
 Revolutionary parties provided the language through which workers could
express their grievances, created links among workers from different factories,
and furnish leaders able to act when revolutionary movement arrived.
 World War I caused enormous hardships that when coupled with the great social
tensions of industrialization within a small autocratic political system, sparked
Russian Revolution of 1917.
11. In what ways and with what impact was Latin America linked to the global economy
of the 19th century?
 Latin America exported food and raw materials to industrialized nations.
 Latin America imported textiles, machinery, tools, weapons and luxury goods
from Europe and the U.S.
 Europeans and Americans invested in Latin America, building railroads to funnel
products to the coast for export.
 The upper and middle classes prospered; but the majority of the population lived
in suffered, working on plantations for low wages.
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
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In Mexico, inequalities lead to revolution in which middle class reformers,
workers, and peasants overthrew the government and institute some reforms.
Participation in the global economy did not lead to industrialization in Latin
America.
Latin American economies become dependent upon European and America.
Vocabulary:
12. Caudillo; a military strongman seize control of government in 19th century Latin
America.
13. Dependent Development; used to describe Latin Americans economic growth 19th
century, which was largely financed by foreign capital and dependent on European
and North American prosperity decisions.
14. Labour Party; British working-class political party established in the 1890s and
dedicated to reforms and a peaceful transition to socialism.
15. Karl Marx; socialism who dated working-class revolution is the key to creating an
ideal communist future.
16. Middle-class values; belief system: the middle class that developed in Britain in the
19th century; it emphasized thrift, hard work, rigid moral behavior, cleanliness, and
respectability.
17. Progressives; followers of American political movement and carry it around 1900
who advocated reform measures to correct the ills of industrialization.
18. Proletariat; Term Karl Marx used to describe the industrial working-class.