Finally, because most of the documents refer to law, you could also consider whether human rights
are primarily a legal or an ethical-religious-moral concern, again according (always) to the
documents. Also, you need to consider the linear chronology of changes, matching those changes to
contemporary historical events.
A good response, thus, will show the connection between theory (of human rights) and action
(governmental responses to demands for human rights); and it will both strengthen the original
thesis’s contentions and demonstrate an ability to extrapolate from documents the nuances of
historical thought.
Section II, Part B: Long-Essay Question
A good response may begin with the creation of a verbal Venn diagram, or at least the overlapping
section of one, and the laying out of the generally acknowledged causes and effects of the Industrial
Revolution. From 1750, population growth and migration created both new markets for goods and a
new (primarily urban) labor pool. New technology and inventions (e.g., the steam engine) resulted in
more efficient means of transportation, communication, and production of goods. The abolition of
slavery in Western Europe, and of serfdom in Russia, resulted in rural-urban (agricultural to
industrial) migration patterns and sustained economies by providing workers.
These elements, in turn, resulted in more specialized labor, a growing middle class that had the
income to buy proliferating goods, and a stronger sense of national identity, or nationalism, with this
last often replacing traditional mores and even religion, and contributing, along with enhanced means
of transportation and communication, to two world wars. Western Europe, and later Russia, embraced
a new imperialism in its search for raw materials, and other areas (like Latin America, for example)
remained a source for those raw materials as well as for agricultural products. As industry grew,
capital and labor provided a general improvement in the standard of living and increased free time
for leisure activities (including professional sports, movies and live entertainment, vacations, and
travel).
The environmental effects of the Industrial Revolution are both manifold and cumulative: factories
and industry have generated air, land, and water pollutants (both in Western Europe and in Russia).
The search for raw materials has resulted in deforestation and exhaustion of soils (in Latin America
and Africa).
Perhaps the most striking and longest-lasting effect of the Industrial Revolution has been
globalization, the integration of economic markets, free trade, and the flow of capital (human and
monetary).