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Class 10 History: The Age of Industrialisation, 8 practice questions with answers

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These are 8 practice questions on Chapter IV, The Age of Industrialisation, of the NCERT Class 10 History textbook, India and the Contemporary World II. Each has a worked answer and the textbook page it comes from. They follow the chapter in order: a timeline from the first English factories to the first Indian jute mill, the slow spread of steam power in Britain, a Victorian worker's year, India's cloth trade in figures, where India's mill workers came from, how handlooms survived, three assertion-and-reason pairs, and the pictures on old cloth labels and calendars. Try each one on paper before you open the answer.

These questions are our own, drafted with AI help. Every fact was checked against the textbook page it cites, but no practising teacher has reviewed them yet. If you find a mistake, please tell us.

How this chapter is examined

The CBSE curriculum for 2026-27 keeps this chapter out of the board paper: it is "to be assessed as part of Periodic Assessment only" (curriculum, page 1). That periodic assessment is a pen-paper test worth 5 of the 20 internal-assessment marks (page 11), so your school will still test it. The learning outcomes ask you to list the economic, political and social features of life before and after industrialisation, and to explain how industrialisation affected colonies, with a focus on India (page 3).

What the chapter says you need

Facts from the NCERT textbook (India and the Contemporary World II, Class X, Chapter IV, printed pages 79 to 102):

A timeline, from England to Jamshedpur

Question 1. Put these in order, earliest first: (P) J.N. Tata sets up India's first iron and steel works, at Jamshedpur; (Q) James Watt patents his improved steam engine; (R) the first cotton mill in Bombay comes up; (S) the earliest factories in England come up; (T) Seth Hukumchand opens Calcutta's first Indian-owned jute mill; (U) James Hargreaves devises the Spinning Jenny; (V) Madras's first spinning and weaving mill begins production; (W) the first jute mill in Bengal is set up. (a) Give the order with the year, or the decade, the chapter gives for each. (b) How many years separate the Spinning Jenny and Watt's patent? (c) The Bombay mill did not start production in the year it came up. When did it? (d) How many years after Bengal's first jute mill did the first Indian jute mill open?

Answer: (a) S by the 1730s, U 1764, Q 1781, R 1854, W 1855, V 1874, P 1912, T 1917; (b) 17 years; (c) 1856; (d) 62 years. (a) S, page 82; U, the "New words" box on page 87; Q, page 84; R, W and V, page 94; P, the Fig. 18 caption on page 95; T, page 94. (b) 1781 − 1764 = 17. (c) The mill went into production two years after it came up: 1854 + 2 = 1856 (page 94). (d) 1917 − 1855 = 62. Like many early industrialists, Hukumchand had traded with China (page 94). (The choice of eight events is our own.)

How fast did Britain change?

Question 2. (a) Britain imported 2.5 million pounds of raw cotton in 1760 and 22 million pounds in 1787. How many times larger was the later figure, and over how many years? (b) In 1873 Britain exported iron and steel worth about £77 million, twice the value of its cotton exports. Roughly what were the cotton exports worth, and what did the two come to together? (c) At the start of the nineteenth century England had 321 steam engines: 80 in cotton, nine in wool, and the others in mines, canals and ironworks. How many were outside textiles, and what share was in textiles? (d) Which industry led the first phase of British industrialisation, which took over after the 1840s, and what raised demand for the second?

Answer: (a) 8.8 times, in 27 years; (b) about £38.5 million; about £115.5 million together; (c) 232 outside textiles; about 28 per cent in textiles; (d) cotton led up to the 1840s, then iron and steel; railway building, which spread in England from the 1840s and reached the colonies in the 1860s. (a) 22 ÷ 2.5 = 8.8, and 1787 − 1760 = 27 (page 82). (b) 77 ÷ 2 = 38.5, and 77 + 38.5 = 115.5 (page 83). (c) 321 − 80 − 9 = 232, and (80 + 9) ÷ 321 ≈ 28 per cent (page 84). Even the most powerful new technology spread slowly; other industries took up steam engines only late in the century (page 84). (d) Page 83.

A Victorian worker's year

Question 3. A made-up worker in Victorian London gets 150 days of work at a gas works through the cold months at 20 pence a day, and 60 days of odd jobs at 12 pence a day. (a) What does he earn in the year, what is that per day over all 365 days, and how many days does he have no work? (b) Take a made-up rise in prices of a quarter (the chapter says only that prices rose sharply during the long Napoleonic War). What share of his old basket of goods can the same money buy? (c) In a slump like the 1830s, the chapter says unemployment reached anything from 35 to 75 per cent in different regions. In a made-up town of 4,000 workers, what range is that? (d) Besides the wage rate, which two things does the chapter say decided what workers really earned?

Answer: (a) 3,720 pence, about 10.2 pence a day, 155 days without work; (b) 80 per cent; (c) 1,400 to 3,000 workers; (d) the number of days of work in the year, and prices, which set what the same wages could buy. (a) 150 × 20 + 60 × 12 = 3,000 + 720 = 3,720; 3,720 ÷ 365 ≈ 10.2; 365 − 150 − 60 = 155. (b) 1 ÷ 1.25 = 0.8, so the same money buys 80 per cent of what it did. (c) 4,000 × 0.35 = 1,400 and 4,000 × 0.75 = 3,000. (d) Page 87: when prices rose sharply during the Napoleonic War, the real value of wages fell, and the period of employment set a worker's average daily income. Gas works were busiest in the cold months (page 85). (The worker, his days and his pay are our own.)

India's cloth trade in figures

Question 4. (a) The value of trade through Surat was Rs 16 million at the close of the 1600s and Rs 3 million by the 1740s. By how much did it fall, and by what percentage? (b) Cotton piece-goods were more than 31 per cent of what India's imports were worth in 1850, and more than half by the 1870s. Take India's imports as a made-up Rs 40 crore in 1850 and Rs 60 crore in a year of the 1870s: what was the least that piece-goods could have been worth in each year? (c) What were the two problems that Indian cotton weavers faced at the same time once Manchester cloth arrived?

Answer: (a) Rs 13 million, about 81 per cent; (b) more than Rs 12.4 crore in 1850 and more than Rs 30 crore in the 1870s; (c) their export market collapsed, and the home market shrank because it was glutted with Manchester imports. (a) 16 − 3 = 13, and 13 ÷ 16 ≈ 81 per cent; only about a fifth of the old trade was left (page 89). (b) 40 × 0.31 = 12.4 and 60 × 0.50 = 30. Around 1800 India had imported almost no cotton piece-goods at all (page 92). (c) Page 92: made by machines at lower cost, the imported cloth was cheap enough to undersell the weavers. (The import totals in rupees are our own.)

Where the mill workers came from

Question 5. (a) Indian factories had 584,000 workers in 1901 and over 2,436,000 in 1946. By how many did the number grow, and roughly how many times larger was it? (b) In 1911, over half the workers in Bombay's cotton industries came from one neighbouring district. Which district, and in a made-up mill of 1,500 workers, how many is that? (c) Registered factories employed only 5 per cent of the industrial labour force in 1911, and 10 per cent by 1931. In a made-up province with 2,00,000 industrial workers in 1931, how many were in registered factories and how many elsewhere? At the 1911 share, how many would have been in factories? (d) Who was the jobber, what did he do for new workers, and how did he use his position?

Answer: (a) by 1,852,000, a little over 4 times; (b) Ratnagiri, more than 750 workers; (c) 20,000 in registered factories and 1,80,000 in small workshops and household units; 10,000 at the 1911 share; (d) usually an old and trusted worker whom the mill owners used to recruit; he brought people from his village, found them work, helped them settle into city life and lent them money in a crisis, but he then demanded money and gifts for his favours and controlled workers' lives. (a) 2,436,000 − 584,000 = 1,852,000, and 2,436,000 ÷ 584,000 ≈ 4.2 (page 95). (b) 1,500 ÷ 2 = 750 (page 95). (c) 2,00,000 × 0.10 = 20,000, and 2,00,000 − 20,000 = 1,80,000; 2,00,000 × 0.05 = 10,000 (page 98). (d) Page 96. Mill workers often went home to their villages for harvests and festivals (page 95). (The mill and the province are our own.)

How the handlooms survived

Question 6. (a) Handloom cloth production almost trebled between 1900 and 1940. If a made-up region wove 500 million yards in 1900, about how much would that be in 1940? (b) By 1941 over 35 per cent of India's handlooms had fly shuttles, and in regions such as Travancore, Madras, Mysore, Cochin and Bengal the share was 70 to 80 per cent. In a made-up weaving town of 1,200 looms, how many would have fly shuttles at the all-India share, and at the regional range? (c) In a famine year, a weaver of coarse cloth and a weaver of Baluchari saris both take their cloth to market. Whose sales hold up better, and why, according to the chapter? (d) Name two kinds of cloth the chapter says mills could not easily copy.

Answer: (a) about 1,500 million yards; (b) more than 420 at the all-India share; 840 to 960 at the regional range; (c) the sari weaver's: fine cloth was bought by the well-to-do, whose demand stayed steady, while the rural poor who bought coarse cloth lost their cash income in bad harvests and famines and could not buy cloth; (d) any two of: saris with woven borders, and the famous lungis and handkerchiefs of Madras. (a) 500 × 3 = 1,500 (page 98). (b) 1,200 × 0.35 = 420; 1,200 × 0.70 = 840 and 1,200 × 0.80 = 960 (page 98). (c) Page 99: the chapter names Banarasi and Baluchari saris as cloth whose sales famines did not touch. (d) Page 99. Those who kept weaving did not necessarily prosper: whole households worked long hours (page 99). (The region, the town and the two weavers are our own.)

Assertion and reason

Question 7. For each pair, choose: (A) both true, and R explains A; (B) both true, but R does not explain A; (C) A true, R false; (D) A false, R true.

  1. A: Demand for the coarse cloth that the poor bought stayed steady even in famine years. R: Mills could not easily imitate specialised weaves.
  2. A: In 1911 about two-thirds of India's large industries were in Bengal and Bombay. R: Handloom cloth production almost trebled between 1900 and 1940.
  3. A: The first cotton mills set up by Indian businessmen mostly spun coarse yarn and did not weave cloth. R: Yarn was not an important part of what Britain sold to India, so making it kept Indian mills out of Manchester's way.

Answer: 1 (D); 2 (B); 3 (A). (1) A is false: the chapter says the demand for coarse cloth fluctuated violently, because the rural poor could not buy cloth in bad years. R is true (page 99). (2) Both are true (page 98), but where the large industries stood does not explain the growth of handloom weaving. (3) Both are true, and R is the reason: Indian mill owners kept clear of Manchester's goods in India's own market; the yarn went to Indian handloom weavers or to China (page 97).

Labels and calendars

Question 8. (a) Four made-up items: (i) a cloth bundle with 'MADE IN MANCHESTER' in bold on its label; (ii) a label showing a goddess beside the cloth; (iii) a calendar showing an emperor holding the product; (iv) an Indian mill's label that says 'Buy what India makes'. For each, what does the chapter say such a label or picture was meant to make the buyer feel or think? (b) Why could a calendar reach buyers that a newspaper advertisement could not? (c) A made-up calendar hangs in a tea shop for a year and 6 customers a day look at it. How many looks is that in the year, and for 4 such calendars?

Answer: (a) (i) that the place of making and the company were known, and the cloth was of good quality; (ii) that the goods had divine approval, and that cloth from a foreign land was something familiar; (iii) if you respect the royal figure, respect the product, whose quality cannot be questioned; (iv) if you care for the nation, buy what Indians produce, the swadeshi message; (b) people who could not read still used calendars, and they hung in tea shops and poor people's homes as well as in offices and middle-class homes, where the advertisement was seen day after day through the year; (c) 2,190 looks, and 8,760 for four calendars. (a) (i) Page 100; (ii) to (iv) page 101. (b) Page 101. (c) 6 × 365 = 2,190, and 4 × 2,190 = 8,760. (The four items, the tea shop and the customers are our own.)

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Sources

All opened and read on 3 November 2026. Page numbers are the printed page numbers of the textbook.

The facts and figures are from the textbook pages above. The questions, worked answers, the sums and the examples marked as ours are our own. This guide is general information; follow your teacher and the official CBSE notices.

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