Unit 5: Revolutions

The British South Africa Company, incorporated under a Royal Charter in 1889, was established to develop the resources of Southern Africa, construct railways, and promote trade. By raising capital from investors in London, the company operated across southern Africa, bypassing local state borders to establish a vast mineral-extraction and commercial network.

The business model described in the passage best illustrates which of the following economic developments of the late nineteenth century?

Source:

"A part of the bourgeoisie is desirous of redressing social grievances, in order to secure the continued existence of bourgeois society. To this section belong economists, philanthropists, humanitarians, improvers of the condition of the working class, organizers of charity... They desire the existing state of society minus its revolutionary and disintegrating elements. They wish for a bourgeoisie without a proletariat. ... By changes in the material conditions of existence, this form of Socialism, however, by no means understands the abolition of the bourgeois relations of production, an abolition that can be effected only by a revolution, but administrative reforms, based on the continued existence of these relations..."
—Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, *The Communist Manifesto*, 1848

Which of the following nineteenth-century developments best represents the 'administrative reforms' criticized by the authors in the passage?

"The establishment of the bank at Hong Kong, with branches in Shanghai and other treaty ports, is not merely a local convenience but a necessity of our expanding global trade. Under the principles of free trade and joint-stock association, capital from London is directed to facilitate the exchange of Indian opium, Chinese tea, and British manufactured goods. This enterprise operates under British charter but relies on cooperation with local Chinese merchants and comprador networks, bypassing traditional state monopolies and establishing a financial infrastructure independent of the Qing imperial court's direct taxation."
— Report by a British trade representative on the establishment of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC), 1866

Based on the passage, the establishment of the bank is best understood as part of which of the following global developments in the nineteenth century?

"Article 12. No whiteman of whatever nation he may be, shall put his foot on this territory with the title of master or proprietor, neither shall he in future acquire any property here. ... Article 14. All acception of color among the children of one and the same family, of whom the chief magistrate is the father, being necessarily to cease, the Haytians shall hence forward be known only by the generic appellation of Blacks."

— Imperial Constitution of Haiti, 1805

The provisions in the excerpt best illustrate which of the following differences between the Haitian Revolution and other contemporary Atlantic revolutions?

"Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general good. The aim of all political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression. The principle of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation. No body nor individual may exercise any authority which does not proceed directly from the nation. Law is the expression of the general will. All citizens have the right to take part personally, or by their representatives, in its making... All citizens, being equal in the eyes of the law, are equally eligible to all dignities and to all public positions and occupations, according to their abilities, and without distinction except that of their virtues and talents."

—Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, France, 1789

Which of the following best explains how the political principles expressed in the excerpt distinguished the French Revolution from the American Revolution?

Source: Sergei Witte, Russian Minister of Finance, secret memorandum to Tsar Nicholas II, 1899

'The influx of foreign capital is, in the opinion of the Minister of Finance, the only way by which our industry can rapidly raise itself to a level where it can provide our country with abundant and cheap goods... To expect that we can develop our industries solely with our domestic savings is to condemn our country to decades of economic stagnation. The experience of all nations shows that the growth of domestic capital is a slow process, whereas foreign capital can build railways, open mines, and establish factories in a few years... If we do not adopt these measures, we will fall into complete economic dependence on more advanced industrial nations, becoming a mere supplier of raw materials while purchasing their manufactured goods.'

Which of the following best explains how the policy advocated in the memorandum represents a common pattern in the global spread of industrialization outside of Western Europe in the late nineteenth century?

Source: Adapted from a letter by an English merchant discussing inland navigation and land usage, 1789.

"The benefit of these inland navigations [canals] is not confined to the towns through which they pass, or the coal-works which they immediately connect. By their means, the inland counties are supplied with fuel at a moderate rate, and the lands are highly improved by the ease with which manure is brought to them. Moreover, the enclosures of our fields, which have of late years so much increased, have driven many hands from the plow; yet these very hands, by the facility of transport, are now employed in the manufacture of iron and the digging of coal, which are the true foundations of our kingdom’s present wealth."

Which of the following developments in eighteenth-century Britain is best illustrated by the letter writer's observations?

Source: John Bowring, British diplomat and economist, *Report on the Commercial Statistics of Syria*, presented to both Houses of Parliament, 1840.

"The manufacturing policy of the Pasha [Muhammad Ali] is a state monopoly. He has attempted to build cotton mills, foundries, and arms factories by commanding the labor of his subjects and prohibiting the import of foreign goods that compete with his establishments. Yet, this system is struggling to compete with European manufactures. The high cost of importing fuel, the resistance of the agricultural population forced into factory work, and the Anglo-Turkish Treaty of 1838, which outlaws monopolies across the Ottoman Empire, threaten to dismantle his entire economic structure."

Which of the following best explains a major difference between the industrialization process in Egypt described in the passage and the industrialization process in Great Britain during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries?

“The introduction of the steamship and the telegraph has completely altered the relations of the East to the West. The Suez Canal, opened in 1869, shortened the voyage from England to India from three months to less than one month. By 1870, submarine telegraph cables connected London directly with Bombay, enabling mercantile transactions to be completed in hours rather than months. . . . The steamship, independent of seasonal winds, has regularized our traffic across the Indian Ocean, while the telegraph has centralized the control of trade in the hands of European metropolitan directors.”

—Adapted from a British colonial administration report on the commerce of India, 1875

Based on the passage and your knowledge of world history, the technological innovations described contributed most directly to which of the following global developments in the nineteenth century?

Source: Iwasaki Yataro, founder of the Mitsubishi Company, letter to his employees, 1876.

"The government has entrusted our company with the task of maritime shipping, which is vital for the empire's national security and economic independence. Foreign shipping companies, possessing vast capital and steamships, have dominated our coastal trade and drained our wealth. If we do not compete with them and drive them out, our nation will never achieve true equality with the Western powers. Therefore, we must operate with efficiency and dedication, not merely for private profit, but to serve the state by establishing our maritime autonomy."

Which of the following developments in the global spread of industrialization during the late nineteenth century is best illustrated by the passage?

Source: Adapted from Thomas Mortimer, *A General Commercial Dictionary*, London, 1766.

"It is not only that our island is rich in coal and iron stone, but that these treasures of the earth lie so near together, and so near to the water-carriage, that they may be brought to the furnace and the forge at a cost unknown in other countries. Furthermore, the modern improvements in husbandry have so far advanced that a small portion of our people can produce the sustenance of the whole, leaving a vast number of hands free for the labor of the mines and the manufactures, while the laws of our realm guarantee to every man the quiet possession of his property and the fruits of his industry."

Which of the following best explains how the economic and environmental conditions described in the passage combined to facilitate the rise of industrial manufacturing in Great Britain?

Source: Adapted from John Houghton, *Collection for Improvement of Husbandry and Trade*, 1696.

'Since the scarcity and dearness of wood has forced us to burn coal, we have found it to serve many purposes where wood was formerly thought indispensable. In the making of iron, the boiling of salt, the baking of bricks, and the brewing of beer, coal has become our chief reliance. Our island is blessed with such vast beds of this mineral, lying near navigable waters, that we are able to sustain these trades at a far lower cost than our continental neighbors, who must still rely on their dwindling forests.'

Based on the passage and your knowledge of world history, which of the following best explains how the environmental conditions described in the source contributed to the onset of the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain?

Source: Simón Bolívar, Venezuelan military and political leader, "Letter from Jamaica," 1815.

"We are still in a position lower than slavery, and therefore it is more difficult for us to rise to the enjoyment of freedom... a people is slave when the government, by its nature or its vices, usurps and arrogates the rights of the citizen or subject. Otherwise, these rights are established and agreed upon by the laws of the republic... We have been harassed by a conduct which has not only deprived us of our rights but has kept us in a sort of permanent infancy with regard to public affairs. If we could at least have managed our domestic affairs and our internal administration, we could have acquainted ourselves with the processes and mechanics of public affairs..."

Which of the following best explains how the political goals expressed in the excerpt compare to the goals of the French Revolution?

"The synthetic production of indigo by German chemical laboratories in the late nineteenth century represents a triumph of modern science. By utilizing coal tar, a byproduct of coke production, chemists have created a dye that is cheaper, purer, and more consistent than the natural plant extract. As a result, the vast indigo plantations of Bengal and Bihar, which for decades supplied the textile mills of Great Britain, are facing rapid collapse. Landowners are shifting to other crops, and thousands of peasant cultivators are displaced. This transition demonstrates that the laboratory has replaced the soil as the primary source of industrial color."
—Consular Report on the Trade of Germany, British Foreign Office, 1901

Based on the passage, the economic transition described most directly reflects which of the following shifts between the First and Second Industrial Revolutions?

Source: Adapted from a petition by small landowners and inhabitants of the parish of Raunds, Northamptonshire, to the British Parliament against the Enclosure Act, 1797.

'The petitioners beg leave to represent to this House that, by the proposed enclosure of the common fields, they will be deprived of the invaluable privilege of keeping cows, sheep, and other livestock on the said commons. This right has hitherto enabled them to support themselves and their families in comfort and independence. Under the enclosure, these lands will be consolidated into large estates, forcing the petitioners to abandon their traditional husbandry and become day laborers for hire, or seek employment elsewhere, to the great detriment of their ancient way of life.'

The developments described in the petition most directly contributed to which of the following preconditions of the Industrial Revolution?

The transition from iron to steel in the latter half of the nineteenth century, made possible by the Bessemer process and open-hearth furnace, did more than merely replace one metal with another. It reconstituted the physical basis of industrial civilization. Steel, possessing twice the strength of iron at a fraction of the weight, enabled the manufacture of rails that could support heavier locomotives, the construction of ocean-going steamers of unprecedented cargo capacity, and the creation of steel-framed structures that transformed urban spaces. Simultaneously, the chemical industry emerged as a pillar of this new phase of production, introducing synthetic dyes, pharmaceuticals, and agricultural fertilizers that altered both global trade patterns and demographic trends.

Which of the following historical developments is most directly represented by the processes described in the passage?

��In a steam-driven factory, the power is distributed from a central engine by means of shafts, belts, and pulleys. This requires machines to be crowded together near the main shafts. The introduction of the electric motor, however, allows each machine to have its own independent power source. Factories can now be constructed with spacious, well-lit layouts, and machines can be placed in the natural sequence of the manufacturing process.”

—Report of the United States Commissioner of Labor, 1895

The technological transition described in the passage most directly facilitated which of the following developments in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries?

"To achieve a level of economic independence that safeguards our political sovereignty, Russia must construct its own industrial base. We remain, in relation to the West, in a state similar to that of a colony, exporting raw materials and importing finished goods. Without state-supported development of metallurgy, railways, and manufacturing, funded in part by foreign loans and protected by high tariffs, we will inevitably succumb to the economic domination of more advanced industrial nations."

— Sergei Witte, Russian Minister of Finance, secret memorandum to Tsar Nicholas II, 1899

Based on the passage, which of the following best explains how the industrialization process advocated by Witte differed from the historical process of industrialization in Great Britain?

“The successful voyage of the steamer *Frigorifique* in 1876, which transported fresh meat from Buenos Aires to France in a chilled state for over one hundred days, marks a new epoch. Henceforth, the vast grazing lands of the Pampas and the Australian bush are brought to the very doors of the crowded industrial cities of Europe. Distance is annihilated, and the pastoralist of the southern hemisphere is made a direct competitor of the European farmer.”

—Adapted from a British trade journal, 1878

Which of the following developments in the late nineteenth century was a direct global consequence of the technological innovation described in the passage?

“The daughters of farmers from the northeastern provinces are brought to the industrial cities of Osaka and Nagoya to work in the cotton spinning and silk reeling mills. Living in crowded dormitories supervised by mill agents, these young women are separated from their agrarian households. While their labor provides essential remittances to rural families suffering from agricultural decline, it disrupts the traditional domestic unit and exposes workers to harsh discipline and disease.”
—Yokoyama Gennosuke, journalist, Japan's Underclass (Nihon no Kaso Shakai), 1899

Based on the passage, the migration of rural women to work in urban textile mills best illustrates which of the following social developments in the nineteenth century?