World History Practice Test: The Industrial Revolution

Britain combined natural resources, banks, colonial markets and good transport by river and sea. China and India had far larger populations.

Landowners fenced off common fields for larger farms, so many rural families looked for jobs in towns. That supplied workers for the new factories.

Watt's separate condenser saved fuel, so steam engines could power mills and mines cheaply. Locomotives came later from engineers such as George Stephenson.

Cotton spinning and weaving moved from homes into factories with these machines. Large-scale steelmaking came later with the Bessemer process.

The gin made short-staple cotton profitable, and planters used more enslaved labor to grow it. It did not reduce the need for field workers.

Cities grew faster than housing, sewers and clean water could be built. Public health laws came only gradually later in the century.

The 1833 Act banned the employment of children under nine in most textile mills and limited hours for older children. It also created factory inspectors.

Marx and Engels argued that class struggle would lead workers to revolution and shared ownership. The free-market view belonged to thinkers like Adam Smith.

Smith described how competition and self-interest guide markets, an idea linked to laissez-faire. Government ownership of industry was a socialist idea.

Cheap steel was used for railways, bridges and tall buildings. Steam pumps for mines were developed much earlier.