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History Optional PYQ Master Pack · Model answer

“Whoever says Industrial Revolution, says cotton.” Comment.

  • UPSC 2011
  • Industrialization

The historian Eric Hobsbawm's famous formulation captures a real truth about Britain's industrial transformation — that no single commodity did more to inaugurate factory-based, mechanized production than cotton textiles.

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What the full answer covers

  • Why Cotton, and Not Wool, Led the Way
  • The Mechanization Sequence
  • Raw Material, Slavery, and the Atlantic Economy
  • Cotton as the Engine of the Factory System
  • The Limits of the Cotton-Centred Narrative

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