Western Civilization II / Unit 9 WC2 0831 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Classifying a Cause: Resource, Capital, Politics, Culture
The idea
The exam asks why Britain industrialized first and offers causes of four kinds: what Britain had in the ground, what it had in the bank, what its parliament did, and what its elites believed. The anchor's list supplies every case, and a question is answered by naming the kind.
In practice
Six cases. Coal in northern England after the forests ran out: resource. Reliable banks lending at fair interest under favorable law: capital. A parliament of free-trade believers and taxes neither arbitrary nor high: politics. Nobles who invested in commerce instead of despising it: culture. A surplus population made by rotation, breeding and enclosure: resource, this time human. The Eden Treaty opening France to British cloth: politics, used as a weapon. And the continental contrast reads backward: France's skeptical elites are culture, its thin banking capital, its costly transport resource.
Where people slip
The anchor ranks energy first and calls the cultural explanation self-serving, so a question that asks for the single cause wants coal. A question that asks why France lagged wants several. Keep the agricultural revolution labeled as the witness's.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Builds on
- 0803The Agricultural Revolution: Rotation, Tools, Enclosure
- 0805Coal: Why Britain Burned It and Where It Lay
- 0806Watt's Engine: From Pumping Mines to Turning Wheels
- 0808Capital, Free Trade, Fair Taxes, and Elites Who Did Not Sneer
- 0809Why the Continent Lagged: Belgium First, France Slow, the Zollverein 1834
Unlocks
- Nothing yet depends on this.
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