UPSC Prelims Practice Questions — Himbury mission

Q1. Lancashire's fine textile mills prized 'long-staple cotton'. In this context, the term refers to which one of the following?

  • A. Cotton whose individual fibres are longer, yielding fine, high-grade yarns
  • B. Cotton harvested over an unusually long growing season
  • C. Cotton stored for a long period before ginning
  • D. Cotton grown on unusually large plantation holdings

Q2. The body established in 1902 to promote and operationalise cotton cultivation across the British Empire for the supply of Lancashire's mills was the:

  • A. British Cotton Growing Association
  • B. East India Company
  • C. Indian Central Cotton Committee
  • D. Manchester Chamber of Commerce

Q3. According to the Himbury Mission's findings, Sudan was expected to produce approximately how many bales of Egyptian- and American-grade cotton within three to four years?

  • A. 2,50,000
  • B. 25,000
  • C. 5,00,000
  • D. 10,00,000

Q4. The principal large-scale irrigated cotton plantation developed in Africa to supply Lancashire — located between the Blue and White Nile — was known as the:

  • A. Gezira Scheme
  • B. Aswan Scheme
  • C. Zamindari Scheme
  • D. Damodar Valley Scheme

Q5. British machine-made cotton goods are said to have progressively displaced India's handwoven cloth after about 1800, sparing only the extreme grades at either end of the quality range. How many grades of Indian cloth are described as having survived this competition?

  • A. Two — the highest and the coarsest
  • B. One — only the coarsest
  • C. Three
  • D. Four

Q6. In the context of colonial indigo cultivation in Bihar, the 'tinkathia system' refers to which one of the following?

  • A. The obligation on cultivators to grow indigo on a fixed portion of their landholding
  • B. A tax levied solely on the export of indigo dye
  • C. A profit-sharing arrangement that guaranteed ryots higher returns than food crops
  • D. A colonial order that entirely banned all food-crop cultivation throughout Bihar

Q7. The acute shortage of raw cotton in Lancashire's mills in the early 1860s, known as the Cotton Famine, was directly precipitated by which one of the following?

  • A. The American Civil War (1861–65)
  • B. The Crimean War (1853–56)
  • C. The First Anglo-Sikh War (1845–46)
  • D. The Napoleonic Wars (1803–15)

Q8. The steady displacement of India's handwoven cotton textiles by cheap machine-made British cloth — reducing India to a supplier of raw cotton — is conventionally traced to the period beginning approximately after which point?

  • A. After about 1800, with Britain's mechanised Industrial Revolution
  • B. After 1947, following India's Independence
  • C. After 1757, immediately following the Battle of Plassey
  • D. After 1919, following the Rowlatt Act