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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Why were the working poor treated with contempt as a new social structure evolved in Europe?
(a) They seemed to be freer than the middle class, who had to be ambitious to get ahead.
(b) They did not need to finance their lives with untrustworthy paper money.
(c) They knew how to perform the manual labor that others no longer performed.
(d) They seemed to lack the quality that had allowed others to move into the middle class.

2. How did Hobsbawm characterize the change in the way that people related to the land, and the way land was related to the economy?
(a) As the least forgivable development of the period.
(b) As the most catastrophic phenomenon of the period.
(c) As the most lucrative development of the period.
(d) As the least recognized phenomenon of the period.

3. Which class was Romanticism popular among, in Hobsbawm's account?
(a) The middle class.
(b) The working poor.
(c) The bureaucracy.
(d) The aristocracy.

4. What did the new view hold that was spreading through Europe?
(a) The improvability of the system by engineers and scientists.
(b) The spiritual unification of humanity in a global community.
(c) The value of tradition in ritual and mystery.
(d) The progress of society through reason and philosophical enlightenment.

5. What was a consequence of the emergence of a new class of people in European society?
(a) Libertinage.
(b) Stricter government surveillance.
(c) Religious freedom.
(d) Nostalgia for lost cultural heritage.

Short Answer Questions

1. What possibility did this social structure open to French society?

2. What was the consequence of French land reforms in North Africa, in Hobsbawm's account?

3. What did working-class organizers promise the workers, as the gap between rich and poor grew wider?

4. How religious does Hobsbawm say the working classes were, by modern standards?

5. What tool did the upper classes use to discriminate against the working poor?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Hobsbawm say was growing along with and as a result of Protestantism?

2. How did those in power react to the spread of middle class ideology, in Hobsbawm's account?

3. How does Hobsbawm describe the class tensions surrounding the new middle class?

4. How does Hobsbawm define middle class ideology?

5. Why were Jews and Protestants in particular successful and socially mobile, in Hobsbawm's account?

6. Why was France's economy left behind, in Hobsbawm's account?

7. What does Hobsbawm say were the three paths a working class person could choose in 1848?

8. What opportunities were open because of the Industrial Revolution that were not open before, in Hobsbawm's account?

9. What does Hobsbawm say was the third kind of secular thought that developed during the middle of the nineteenth century?

10. What examples does Hobsbawm cite to demonstrate his point that the arts were responsive to the socioeconomic conditions in Europe in the mid-1800s?

(see the answer keys)

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