Drill 17 · Multiple Choice · Unit 6: Industrialization and Its Effects
AP World History Unit 6 Drill 17 is a Multiple Choice practice drill covering Unit 6: Industrialization and Its Effects. It contains 5 original questions created by Brian Stewart, a Barron's test prep author with over 20 years of tutoring experience.
This drill focuses on how industrialization spread beyond Britain in the 19th century and why different societies industrialized in different ways. Read the passage carefully, then answer all five questions.
Adapted from a modern historian's comparative analysis of industrialization.
"The spread of industrialization from Britain to the rest of the world was neither automatic nor uniform. Britain's first-mover advantage rested on a specific combination of factors — abundant coal and iron, a colonial empire providing raw materials and markets, a culture of practical invention, and a relatively liberal political environment that allowed entrepreneurs to accumulate and reinvest capital. When industrialization spread to continental Europe, the United States, Russia, and Japan, each society adapted the process to its own conditions. Germany's industrialization was characterized by large banks financing heavy industry and close coordination between government and business. Japan's Meiji industrialization was explicitly state-directed, with the government building model factories, sending students abroad, and hiring foreign experts. Russia industrialized late and unevenly, driven by state demand for military capability rather than consumer markets. In every case, the state played a larger role than it had in Britain. The liberal British model was the exception, not the rule."