1. Why did the Industrial Revolution take place in Britain first? What conditions existed in Britain that did not exist elsewhere?
2. Was the Industrial Revolution inevitable? Was it a spontaneous or a planned event? What were the alternatives to industrialization?
3. Did the free-enterprise system and the "invisible hand" of the marketplace correct abuses and improve conditions, or was government intervention required?
4. Why was railway building one of the keys to the industrialization of Europe and North America? How did the construction of railways require new sources of capital, as well as new types of management?
5. What social effects did industrialization have on both the peasantry and urban workers?
6. Describe the code of respectability as it existed among the middle classes of nineteenth-century Britain and Europe. Was such a code a reality or an ideal?
7. Did the Industrial Revolution change a general understanding of gender in the nineteenth century? In what ways did women become more visible?
8. How did the factory system create class-consciousness among factory workers?