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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. Why were the working poor treated with contempt as a new social structure evolved in Europe?

2. How did this social structure change in the years after the Napoleonic Wars?

3. How does Hobsbawm say conditions for the working poor changed in the mid-1800s?

4. What landmark event does Hobsbawm use as the beginning of the middle class ideology?

5. Which religion was expanding from Turkey through Africa and to the east?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. Why, in Hobsbawm's account, was Britain the only industrialized nation in 1848?

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

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

5. How does Hobsbawm describe the working class' living conditions?

6. How does Hobsbawm describe France's effect on land reform?

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

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

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

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

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

Write a detailed review of "The Age of Revolution". What are the book's main themes and preoccupations? What are its methods? How does it achieve its intentions? Where does it fail to?

Essay Topic 3

What are the major developments that have shaped the hundred and sixty or so years since 1848? Choose one and describe, in much the way Hobsbawm does, the factors that led to the development, as well as its primary consequences.

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