CBSE Class 10 Social Science Print Culture and The Modern World MCQs

Short Answers Type Questions

Question. Explain any three features of handwritten manuscripts before the age of print in India?
Answer: 1. They were copied on palm leaves or on handmade papers.
2. Pages were beautifully illustrated.
3. They were pressed between wooden covers or sewn together to ensure preservation.
4. Manuscripts were available in vernacular languages.
5. Highly expensive & fragile.
6. They could not be read easily as script was written in different styles.
7. They were not widely used in everyday life.

Question. Why did the woodblock method become popular in Europe?
Answer: 1. Production of handwritten manuscripts could not meet the ever increasing demand for books.
2. Copying was an expensive, laborious and time consuming business.
3. The manuscripts were fragile, awkward to handle and could not be carried around or read easily.
4. By the early 15th century, woodblocks started being widely used in Europe to print textiles, playing cards and religious pictures with simple, brief texts.

Question. What was the role of new ‘visual image’ culture in printing in India?
Answer: 1. In the end of 19th century a new visual culture had started.
2. With the increasing number of printing presses visual images could be easily reproduced in multiple copies.
3. Painters like ‘Raja Ravi Verma’ produced images for mass circulation.
2. Cheap prints and calendars were brought even by the poor to decorate the walls of their houses.

Question. “Print popularized the ideas of the idea of the enlightenment thinkers.” Explain.
Answer: 1. Collectively the writings of thinkers provided a critical commentary on tradition, superstition and despotism.
2. Scholars and thinkers argued for the rule of reason rather than custom and demanded that
everything to be judged through the application of reason and rationality.
3. They attacked the sacred authority of the church and the despotic power of the state thus eroding the legitimacy of a social order based on tradition.
4. The writing of Voltaire and Rousseau were read widely and those who read these books saw the world through new eyes, eyes that were questioning critical and rational.

Question. How did people entertain themselves in the ‘chawls’?
Answer: 1. Magicians, Monkey players or acrobats used to perform their acts on the streets.
2. The Nandi bull used to predict the future.
3. Chawls were also the place for the exchange of news about jobs, strikes, riots or demonstrations.

Question. Explain the social change in London which led to the need for underground?
Answer: 1. British made a million houses, single family cottages.
2. Now people could not walk to work and this led to the development of underground railways.
1. By 1880, the expended train services were carrying 40 million passengers in a year.

Question. What was the status of the women folk in the conservative industrial towns?
Answer: 1. Women of upper and middle classes faced higher level of isolation, although their lives were made easier by domestic maids.
2. Women who worked for wages had some control over their lives particularly among the lower social classes.
3. As women lost their industrial jobs and conservative people railed against their presence in public plans, women were forced to withdraw into their homes.

Long Answer Type Questions

Question. -‘Bombay was a prime city if India’. Justify by giving examples.
Answer: 1. It was the major outlet for cotton textile from Gujarat.
2. It functioned as a major port city.
3. It was an important administrative centre in western India.
4. It soon emerged as a major industrial centre.
5. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 brought the west close to Bombay.

Question. Describe the life in chawls?
Answer: 1. Chawls were multistoried structure built and owned by private landlords such as Merchants, bankers and building contractors.
2. Each chawl was divided into smaller one room tenements which had no private toilets.
3. Many families could reside at a time in a tenement.
4. People had to keep the window of their rooms closed even in humid weather due to close proximity of filthy gutters, buffalo stables etc.
5. Though water was scarce and people often quarreled every morning for a turn at the top observers found that house were kept quite clean.

Question. Explain the life style of workers of mid 19th century in Britain?
Answer: 1. In most of the industries the demand for labour was seasonal.
2. The workers were getting very low wages.
3. Factories employed large numbers of women.
4. Most of the workers were living in slums. Factories or workshop owners did not house the migrant workers.
5. For the poor workers the street often was the only place for rest, leisure and fun.

Question. Describe the problems of traveling in the underground railway?
Answer: 1. People were afraid to travel underground.
2. The Compartments were over crowed and polluted by smoke.
3. The atmosphere was a mixture of sulphur, coal and dust with fuel fumes from the gas lamps.
4. Many felt that the iron monsters added to the mess and unhealthiness of the city.
5. Suffocation due to lack of oxygen supply and heat.

Question. How print revolution led to the development of reading mania in Europe.
Answer: As literacy and schools spread in European countries there was a virtual reading mania.
1. A new forms of popular literature appeared to target new readers
2. There were ritual calendars along with ballads and folk tales.
3. In England penny chapbooks were carried by petty peddlers known as chapmen and sold for a penny, So that even poor could buy them.
4. In France these law priced books were called Bibliotheque Bleue as they were bound in cheap blue covers.
5. There were romances, histories, books of various sixes, serving developed to combine information on current affairs with entertainment.
6. Periodical pressed developed to combine information on current affairs with entertainment.
7. The idea of scientists and scholars had now become more accessible to the common people.

Question. How did oral culture enter print and how was the printed material transmitted orally? Explain
Answer: Oral culture entered print into the following ways –
1. Printers published popular ballads and folktales.
2. Books were profusely illustrated with pictures. Printed material was transmitted orally in the following ways.
I. These were sung at gathering in villages, taverns and in towns.
II. They were recited in public gathering.

Question. Explain the impact of print on Indian women.
Answer: 1. Writers started writing about the lives and features of women and this increased the number of women readers.
2. Women writers write their own autobiography. They highlighted the condition of women, their ignorance and how they forced to do hard domestic labour.
3. A large section of Hindu writing was devoted to the education of women.
4. In the early 20th century the journals written by women become very popular in which women’s education, widowhood, widow remarriage were discussed.
5. Many writers published how to teach women to be obedient wives.

Question. By the end of the 19th century a new visual cultural was taking shapes. Write any three features of this new visual cultural.
Answer: 1. Visual images could be easily reproduced in multiple copies.
2. Printers produced images for mass circulation cheap prints and calendars could be brought even by the poor.
3. By the 1870’s caricatures and cartoons were being published in journals and news papers.
4. Mass production of cost and visual images reduced the cost of production. So cheap prints and calendars were available in the market even for the poor to decorate the walls of their homes.

Question. ‘Many Histories have argued that print culture created the conditions within which the French Revolution occurred.’ Explain.
Answer: 1. The print popularized the ideas of the enlightened thinkers who attacked the authority of the church and the despotic power of the state.
2. The print created a new culture of dialogue and debate and the public become aware of reasoning. They recognized the need to question the existing ideas and beliefs.
3. The literature of 1780’s mocked the royalty and criticized their morality and the existing social order. This literature led to the growth of hostile sentiments against.