Chapter 4: The Age of Industrialisation Short Questions | history Class 10 CBSE

ByteNotes

Chapter 4: The Age of Industrialisation Short Questions | history Class 10 CBSE | ByteNotes.in

Short Answer

Easy difficulty • Direct answer format

Easy

Question 1

Quick Recall

What is proto-industrialisation?

Proto-industrialisation refers to the phase of large-scale industrial production for international markets that existed before factories were established.
In this system, merchants from European towns moved to the countryside and gave advances to peasants and artisans to produce goods for them.
Goods were produced within family farms and rural households rather than in factories, and merchants controlled the entire network of commercial exchanges.

ByteNotes

Short Answer

Medium difficulty • Direct answer format

Medium

Question 2

Quick Recall

Why did merchants in seventeenth-century Europe prefer to operate in the countryside rather than in towns?

Urban crafts and trade guilds were powerful in towns; they controlled production, regulated prices and restricted the entry of new merchants into trade.
Rulers granted guilds monopoly rights to produce and trade in specific goods, making it difficult for new merchants to set up business in towns.
In the countryside, poor peasants and artisans were willing to work for merchants without such restrictions, allowing merchants to expand production freely.

ByteNotes

Short Answer

Easy difficulty • Direct answer format

Easy

Question 3

Quick Recall

What was the significance of cotton in British industrialisation?

Cotton was the first symbol and the leading sector of the new industrial era, with its production booming in the late eighteenth century.
Britain's import of raw cotton soared from 2.5 million pounds in 1760 to 22 million pounds by 1787, reflecting the rapid expansion of the cotton industry.
A series of inventions in the eighteenth century improved each stage of cotton production — carding, twisting, spinning and rolling — and Richard Arkwright's cotton mill centralised all these processes.

ByteNotes

Short Answer

Medium difficulty • Direct answer format

Medium

Question 4

Quick Recall

Why did Victorian Britain prefer hand labour over machines in many industries?

There was no shortage of cheap human labour; poor peasants and vagrants moved to cities in large numbers keeping wages low, so industrialists had little incentive to invest in costly machines.
Many industries required intricate designs and specific shapes that machines could not easily produce; for example, 500 varieties of hammers and 45 kinds of axes required skilled hand labour.
Upper-class consumers preferred handmade products as symbols of refinement and class, while machine-made goods were primarily meant for export to the colonies.

ByteNotes

Short Answer

Medium difficulty • Direct answer format

Medium

Question 5

Quick Recall

What was the Spinning Jenny and why did workers oppose it?

The Spinning Jenny was a machine devised by James Hargreaves in 1764 that allowed one worker to operate multiple spindles simultaneously, speeding up spinning and reducing labour demand.
Workers, particularly women who depended on hand spinning for their livelihood, feared that the machine would destroy their employment by doing the work of many spinners.
When the jenny was introduced in the woollen industry, women attacked the new machines; this conflict over its introduction continued for a long time, reflecting workers' deep insecurity about technology.

ByteNotes

Short Answer

Medium difficulty • Direct answer format

Medium

Question 6

Quick Recall

How did seasonality of work affect the lives of workers in Victorian Britain?

Many industries like gas works, breweries, book-binding and printing had seasonal demand, meaning workers were employed for only part of the year and faced prolonged periods without income.
During the off-season, workers had to return to the countryside, do odd jobs or struggle to survive, making their lives highly insecure and unpredictable.
Industrialists preferred seasonal hand labour over machines because it was cheaper to hire workers temporarily rather than invest capital in machinery for irregular demand.

ByteNotes

Short Answer

Medium difficulty • Direct answer format

Medium

Question 7

Quick Recall

Why was the steam engine slow to be adopted despite being a powerful invention?

New technology was expensive and merchants and industrialists were cautious; the machines often broke down and repair was costly, making them less attractive investments.
The steam engine was not always as effective as its inventors claimed; at the start of the nineteenth century there were no more than 321 steam engines in all of England.
Since Britain had abundant cheap labour, industrialists saw little reason to replace human workers with costly machines, slowing the adoption of steam technology.

ByteNotes

Short Answer

Easy difficulty • Direct answer format

Easy

Question 8

Quick Recall

What were the main pre-colonial trade routes of Indian textiles?

Land trade routes carried Indian textiles through the north-west frontier via mountain passes and deserts to Afghanistan, eastern Persia and Central Asia, mainly through Armenian and Persian merchants.
Sea trade operated through major ports: Surat on the Gujarat coast linked India to the Gulf and Red Sea ports, while Masulipatam and Hoogly had links with Southeast Asian ports.
A network of Indian merchants, supply merchants and bankers financed production, carried goods and supplied exporters, with supply merchants linking port towns to inland weaving regions.

ByteNotes

Short Answer

Medium difficulty • Direct answer format

Medium

Question 9

Quick Recall

What was a gomastha and what role did the East India Company assign to them?

A gomastha was a paid servant appointed by the East India Company to supervise weavers directly, eliminating the earlier network of traders and brokers.
Their duties included collecting supplies of woven cloth from weaving villages, examining the quality of cloth and ensuring regular delivery to Company warehouses.
They gave out advances (loans) to weavers to purchase raw materials, but weavers who accepted these loans were bound to supply cloth only to the Company and could not sell to any other buyer.

ByteNotes

Short Answer

Medium difficulty • Direct answer format

Medium

Question 10

Quick Recall

Why did the port of Surat decline by the end of the eighteenth century?

European companies, particularly the East India Company, gradually gained monopoly rights to trade, diverting export trade away from Indian merchants who had controlled the Surat trade.
The gross value of trade through Surat collapsed from Rs 16 million at the end of the seventeenth century to just Rs 3 million by the 1740s, as European ships and companies took over.
The credit networks that financed trade through Surat dried up, local bankers went bankrupt, and old trading houses collapsed as Bombay and Calcutta grew under European control.

ByteNotes

Premium Access

Unlock all Short Questions

You are viewing 10 free short questions from this chapter. Upgrade to Premium to unlock the remaining 15 questions.

Upgrade to Premium15 questions locked

Chapter sections

Chapter 4: The Age of Industrialisation | Short Questions

What is proto-industrialisation?

Why did merchants in seventeenth-century Europe prefer to operate in the countryside rather than in towns?

What was the significance of cotton in British industrialisation?

Why did Victorian Britain prefer hand labour over machines in many industries?

What was the Spinning Jenny and why did workers oppose it?

How did seasonality of work affect the lives of workers in Victorian Britain?

Why was the steam engine slow to be adopted despite being a powerful invention?

What were the main pre-colonial trade routes of Indian textiles?

What was a gomastha and what role did the East India Company assign to them?

Why did the port of Surat decline by the end of the eighteenth century?

Unlock all Short Questions