Margin review 17
What was distinctive about Britain that may help to explain its status as the breakthrough point of the Industrial Revolution?
1.Britain had a rapidly growing population that provided a ready supply of industrial workers with few alternatives available to them. 2.British aristocrats, unlike their counterparts elsewhere in Europe, had long been interested in commerce. 3.Britain possessed a ready supply of coal and iron ore, often located close to each other and within easy reach of major industrial centers.
What were the differences between industrialization in the United States and that in Russia?
1.In the United States, social and economic change came as free farmers, workers, and businessmen created an industrilized economy without much direct government intervention. In autocratic Russia, change was far more often initiated by the state itself, in its continuing efforts to catch up with the more powerful and innovative states of Europe. 2. In the United States, working-class consciousness among factory laborers did not develop as quickly and did not become as radical unlike Russia, in part because workers in the USA were alowed to unionize and vote and as a result USA workers got better wages and conditions. 3.Unlike industrialization in the United States, Russian industrialization was associated with with the 5 year plans of Stalin
In what ways and with what impact was Latin America linked to the global economy of the nineteenth century?
1.Latin America exported food products and raw materials to industrializing nations, increasing exports by a factor of ten in the sixty years or so after 1850. 2.In return for these exports, Latin America imported the textiles, machinery, tools, weapons, and luxury goods of Europe and the United States. 3.Upper-class landowners benefited from the trade as exports flourished and the value of their land soared 4.But the vast majority of the population lived in rural areas, where they suffered the most and benefited the least from exports to the global economy; many lower-class farmers were pushed off their land, ending up either in remote and poor areas or working as dependent laborers for poor wages on the plantations of the wealthy
How did Karl Marx understand the Industrial Revolution? In what ways did his ideas have an impact in the industrializing world of the nineteenth century?
1.Marx saw the Industrial Revolution as the story of class struggle between the oppressor (the bourgeoisie, or the owners of industrial capital) and the oppressed (the proletariat, or the industrial working class). 2.For Marx, the Industrial Revolution bore great promise as a phase in human history, for it made humankind far more productive, thus bringing the end of poverty in sight. 3.However, according to Marx, capitalist societies could never eliminate poverty, because private property, competition, and class hostility prevented those societies from distributing the abundance of industrial economies to the workers whose labor had created that abundance.
How did Britain's middle classes change during the nineteenth century?
1.Middle-class society was composed of political liberals who favored constitutional government, private property, free trade, and social reform within limits. 2.Ideas of thrift and hard work, a rigid morality, and cleanliness characterized middle-class culture. 3.Women were cast as homemakers, wives, and mothers and charged with creating an emotional haven for their men. They were also the moral center of family life and the educators of respectability
What factors contributed to the making of a revolutionary situation in Russia by the beginning of the twentieth century?
1.Russian factory workers quickly developed an unusually radical class consciousness, based on harsh conditions and the absence of any legal outlet for their grievances. 2.A small but growing number of educated Russians found in Marxist socialism a way of understanding the changes they witnessed daily and hope for the future in a revolutionary upheaval of workers. 3.World War I caused enormous hardships that, when coupled with the immense social tensions of industrialization within a still autocratic political system, sparked the Russian Revolution of 1917.
In what ways did the Industrial Revolution shape the character of nineteenth-century European imperialism?
1.The enormous productivity of industrial technology and Europe's growing affluence created the need for extensive raw materials and agricultural products found in other parts of the world; and the Europeans went and took them. 2.Europe needed to sell its own manufactured goods, and colonies proved to be important markets. 3.The Industrial Revolution produced technological innovations such as the steamship, the breech-loading rifle, and the telegraph that facilitated imperialism.
Did Latin America follow or diverge from the historical path of Europe during the nineteenth century?
1.The population of Latin America increased rapidly, as did urbanization, similar to what was occurring in Europe. 2.Many Europeans immigrated to Latin America. 3.A middle class formed, although it was much smaller than that of Europe. 4.However, Latin America diverged from the historical path of Europe in certain ways; central to this divergence was the lack of a thorough Industrial Revolution anywhere in Latin America and the development instead of an economy dependent on financial capital from and exports to the industrial economies of Europe.
In what respects did the roots of the Industrial Revolution lie within Europe? In what ways did that transformation have global roots?
1.The roots of the Industrial Revolution lay within Europe because Europe's political system, which was composed of many small and highly competitive states, favored innovation. 2.Globally, 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 stimulated European commerce. 3.The conquest of the Americas allowed Europeans to draw disproportionately on world resources and provided a growing market for European machine-produced goods.
How did the Industrial Revolution transform British society?
1.While landowning aristocrats suffered little in material terms, they declined as a class as elite urban groups grew in wealth and status 2.As Britain's industrial economy matured, it gave rise to a sizeable "lower middle class" people employed in the growing service sector as clerks. This group distinguished itself from the working class because they did not undertake manual labor. 3.Over time, laboring classes also sought greater political participation, organized after 1824 into trade unions to improve their conditions, and developed socialist ideas that challenged the assumptions of capitalist society.
Why did Marxist socialism not take root in the United States?
2.The immense religious, ethnic, and racial divisions of American society undermined the class solidarity of American workers and made it far more difficult to sustain class-oriented political parties and a socialist labor movement. 2.The country's remarkable economic growth generated on average a higher standard of living for American workers than their European counterparts experienced. 3.By 1910, a particularly large group of white-collar workers in sales, services, and offices outnumbered factory laborers.
