European History
Name: ____________________________
Period: _______________
Chapter 23 – Reading Comprehension Questions
The Culture of Industrial Europe, 1850-1914
ID Terms: who, what when, were
why do we care:
telegraph & Morse code (Day 1)
Louis Pasteur (Day 2)
Marie Curie (Day 2)
Charles Darwin (Day 4)
Herbert Spencer (Day 4)
Definitions:
lithography
Guglielmo Marconi
Suez Canal
Panama Canal
Trans-Siberian railroad
white-collar
Bon Marché
leisure
magic lantern
mass society
John Snow
Robert Koch
Florence Nightingale
Emmaline Pankhurst
feminism
Realism
Impressionism
Cubists
abstract art
Futurists
Auguste Comte & positivism
empiricism
evolution
natural selection
Gregor Mendel
social Darwinists
eugenics
special theory of relativity
REMEMBER: Write full and complete answers in your own words!!
Day 1 - pp. 689-697: Introduction & The Second Industrial Revolution
1. Read the Introduction (pp. 689-690) and identify the major themes of this chapter.
2. What were the major advantages to the Siemens-Martin (open-hearth) process within the steel industry?
What was this new steel used for?
3. Make a list of the products and their importance that were a result of the advances in chemistry in the late
19th century?
4. What are some of the uses of a) coal gas and natural gas, b) kerosene, c) petroleum, d) gasoline, and e)
electricity.
5. Explain how the telegraph, Morse code (telegram), telephone and wireless radically change
communication of the late 19th century. Give specific examples of each.
6. How do the Suez and Panama Canals make it easier and faster to travel in the late 19th century?
7. Explain how “transportation revolution” continued to expand in the late 19th century.
8. Read New Places and patterns of Work (pp. 695-696) Describe what life was like in urban areas at this
time. In what ways is it similar to urban living prior to 1850 and in what ways is it different?
9. Read The New Concept of Leisure (pp. 696-697). Write a 3-4 sentence summary for each of the gold
subsections in which you illustrate in what ways people of different classes could find ways to entertain
themselves. Which of these entertainments do think were popular among the working class? Among the
middle class? The upper class?
Day 2 - pp. 697 -700, 701 & 709: Mass Society & Marie Curie
1. How did mass consumption help to blur some of the lines between the different social classes in the late
19th century?
2. How did mass distribution of newspaper and magazines as well as mass production help to bring about
the need for department stores?
3. In what different ways did department stores impact women’s lives?
4. Make a list of the important medical discoveries of the late 19th century. Be sure to include the discoverer,
what they discovered and explain the significance of each discovery.
5. Read Families and Feminism (pp. 699-700) Describe in very concrete terms how some women’s lives were
changing in the second half of the 19th century?
6. Read pg. 709 A New Direction. Explain using examples from the text the ways in which Marie Curie was
a) a feminist, b) an important scientist, c) a Polish nationalist.
7. Read pg. 701 Marie Curie Recalls her Youth. In what ways were Marie Curie as well as others in her
community oppressed under Russian rule? Why could Polish young people in the 1880s think of study as
a patriotic activity? Can you imagine any students in the 21st century having the same attitude? If so,
where and why?
Day 3 - pp. 700- 706: Art & Industrial Society
1. Write a summary for each of the following art movements. Include a description of the movement, as well
as important artists and their works.
a. Realism
d. abstract art
b. Impressionism
e. Futurists
c. Cubists
2. Choose one artist from each movement, using the Artchive website http://artchive.com/ftp_site.htm click
on your chosen artist on list on the left-hand side of the website and identify and print off an image that
you think is representative of their work. Be sure to list the name of the artist, the title of the work, and the
year the work was completed. It is important that you complete this for in-class use on the day of our
discussion of this section.
3. Compile a list of issues or objectives that realist or naturalist authors had in late 19th century. What did
they want their readers to be aware of?
4. Describe the ways in which art and literature were made more available to the masses with help from new
technological advances of the late 19th century.
Day 4 - pp. 706-711: Science and Social Sciences (stop at Critiques of Reason)
1. In what ways do thinkers like Auguste Comte, Emile Durkheim and Max Weber suggest that one study
society (sociology)?
2. Explain how the ideas of Charles Darwin and the discovery of genes by Gregor Mendel complement one
another.
3. How is Darwin’s theory of evolution applied to human society? What are the very real repercussions of
social Darwinists theories?
4. What is anthropology and in what ways does this new science support theories of ethnic superiority?
5. Compile a list of important chemical discoveries of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Be sure to list the
discovers and explain how their discoveries impacted the scientific, medical and/or technological
communities?
6. How do Einstein and Planck radical “reformulate physicists’ understanding of the universe”?
7. Which of the scientific discoveries covered in this chapter came into direct confrontation with 19 th century
religious beliefs?
8. Why did many Europeans turn away from religion (both Christianity and Judaism) at this time?