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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. Which form of rebellion did the working poor NOT engage in?

2. What was increasing at the same time that the railroads were expanding in the 1830s?

3. Which class was Romanticism popular among, in Hobsbawm's account?

4. What contribution does Hobsbawm say the Industrial Revolution made to the arts?

5. What did Hobsbawm find in conservative thinking of the period?

Short Essay Questions

1. Which artist does Hobsbawm cite as examples of the high standards reached in the arts in the mid-1800s?

2. What works marked the beginning and the peak, respectively, of middle class ideology, in Hobsbawm's account?

3. Which religions were expanding as the Catholic Church's importance was declining?

4. How does Hobsbawm say religion was changing after the French Revolution?

5. Why does Hobsbawm describe the changing use of the landscape "the most catastrophic phenomenon" of the period?

6. Who does Hobsbawm say was most receptive to Romanticism, and why?

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

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

9. What had to happen to land use practices, in Hobsbawm's account, for capitalism to take hold in Europe?

10. What happened in France while the rest of Europe was industrializing?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Who are the main characters in Hobsbawm's "The Age of Revolution"? Is it the nations themselves, or the political parties, or industries characters? Does Hobsbawm describe them as individual characters? Cite a few instances of how Hobsbawm relates individuals to parties, and individual experience to historical developments.

Essay Topic 2

Revolutions took place for years after the French Revolution, some successful, some not. How would you characterize the legacy of the French Revolution in these other revolutions? Were these revolutions independent occurrences? Were they inspired by or in any way caused by the French Revolution? Or, were they merely reactions against the same cultural developments that had happened in France?

Essay Topic 3

Hobsbawm describes the importance of nationalism in the development of a middle class that had developed its own characteristic ideology, which was marked by a faith in a universe that progressed either toward spiritual fulfillment (Hegel) or communism (Marx). Both of these conclusions were for the mass, though, and it would not be until Freud that people could see the difficulties of being individuals within a mass or nation.

Write an essay that addresses the importance of nationalism in your life. In what ways are you a national creature? Does your nationalism interfere with or obscure your individuality?

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