NDA (I) 2018 General Ability Test · Question 121 of 150

Correct — C, Arnold Toynbee. The four qualifying words in the stem are 'in English'. The phrase had already been used on the continent — in French as la révolution industrielle and in German by Engels — but it was the English economic historian Arnold Toynbee, who lived from 1852 to 1883, who brought it into English usage and attached it to precisely the period the stem names, British industrial development between 1760 and 1820. His Oxford lectures of 1880 and 1881 were published after his early death, in 1884, and it is to them that the popularisation of the term in English is credited.

• (a)Karl Marx — Marx wrote at enormous length about industrial capitalism, and Capital appeared in 1867, but he wrote in German and the coining of this particular English phrase is not attributed to him. He is placed here because his name is the one students associate most strongly with the analysis of industry.
• (b)Georges Michelet — This option represents the French side of the story, which is real — the term was in French use well before it was in English, and the French economist Jérôme-Adolphe Blanqui described la révolution industrielle in 1837. The name as printed is the textbook's, and the French historian usually meant is Jules Michelet; either way the language is French, so the option fails the 'in English' condition.
• (d)Friedrich Engels — Engels came genuinely close. He wrote of an industrial revolution in The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 — but he wrote it in German, and the book was not translated into English until late in the nineteenth century, by which time Toynbee had already given his lectures.

The Industrial Revolution names the transformation of Britain between roughly 1760 and 1820, when mechanised production, the factory system, steam power and a shift of population from countryside to town changed the basis of the economy. The label was applied afterwards, by historians looking back, and the credit for it splits between languages: continental writers used the phrase decades before English writers did, and Toynbee's lectures fixed it in English scholarship.

This is a question about who said something in which language, so read the qualifiers before you look at the names. Two NDA papers show how sharply the distinction is enforced. A 2022 paper asked simply who first used the term 'Industrial Revolution' and its official key marks J. A. Blanqui, the French economist. A 2017 paper asked the same question as this one, with the words 'for the first time in English' and the same 1760 to 1820 dating, and its key marks Arnold Toynbee. The two answers do not contradict each other — Blanqui used it in French, Toynbee first used it in English — but a candidate who has memorised one name without its qualifier will answer one of the two questions wrongly. Note also that this Toynbee is not the twentieth-century world historian Arnold J. Toynbee, author of A Study of History, who was his nephew; the man in this item died at thirty, and Toynbee Hall in east London is named in his memory.

• Arnold Toynbee, 1852 to 1883, gave the Oxford lectures of 1880 and 1881 that were published in 1884 and popularised the term in English.
• Jérôme-Adolphe Blanqui described 'la révolution industrielle' in French in 1837.
• Friedrich Engels used the idea in The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, in German; the English translation came only late in the century.
• The period the stem names, 1760 to 1820, is the conventional dating of the first Industrial Revolution in Britain.

• Ignoring the qualifier 'in English', which is the whole question.
• Confusing this Arnold Toynbee with his nephew Arnold J. Toynbee, the twentieth-century world historian.
• Assuming Marx must be the answer to any question about industrial capitalism.

NDA has set this attribution three times in seven years, and the answer flips between Blanqui and Toynbee depending on whether the stem says 'first used' or 'first used in English'.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The conventional dating of the first Industrial Revolution in Britain, as used by Arnold Toynbee, is

  • (a)1660 to 1720
  • (b)1760 to 1820
  • (c)1850 to 1900
  • (d)1900 to 1945

  Answer(b) 1760 to 1820 — the period named in Toynbee's lectures and repeated in this question's own stem.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Friedrich Engels described the condition of the industrial working class in which country?

  • (a)France
  • (b)Germany
  • (c)England
  • (d)Russia

  Answer(c) England — his 1844 book was The Condition of the Working Class in England, written in German.