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托福official51阅读第3篇Population Growth in Nineteenth-Century Europe题目解析

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Population Growth in Nineteenth-Century Europe
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Because of industrialization, but also because of a vast increase in agricultural output without which industrialization would have been impossible, Western Europeans by the latter half of the nineteenth century enjoyed higher standards of living and longer, healthier lives than most of the world’s peoples. In Europe as a whole, the population rose from 188 million in 1800 to 400 million in 1900. By 1900, virtually every area of Europe had contributed to the tremendous surge of population, but each major region was at a different stage of demographic change.

Improvements in the food supply continued trends that had started in the late seventeenth century. New lands were put under cultivation, while the use of crops of American origin, particularly the potato, continued to expand. Setbacks did occur. Regional agricultural failures were the most common cause of economic recessions until 1850, and they could lead to localized famine as well. A major potato blight (disease) in 1846-1847 led to the deaths of at least one million persons in Ireland and the emigration of another million, and Ireland never recovered the population levels the potato had sustained to that point. Bad grain harvests at the same time led to increased hardship throughout much of Europe.

After 1850, however, the expansion of foods more regularly kept pace with population growth, though the poorer classes remained malnourished. Two developments were crucial. First, the application of science and new technology to agriculture increased. Led by German universities, increasing research was devoted to improving seeds, developing chemical fertilizers, and advancing livestock. After 1861, with the development of land-grant universities in the United States that had huge agricultural programs, American crop-production research added to this mix. Mechanization included the use of horse-drawn harvesters and seed drills, many developed initially in the United States. It also included mechanical cream separators and other food-processing devices that improved supply.

The second development involved industrially based transportation. With trains and steam shipping, it became possible to move foods to needy regions within Western Europe quickly. Famine (as opposed to malnutrition) became a thing of the past. Many Western European countries, headed by Britain, began also to import increasing amounts of food, not only from Eastern Europe, a traditional source, but also from the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand. Steam shipping, which improved speed and capacity, as well as new procedures for canning and refrigerating foods (particularly after 1870), was fundamental to these developments.

Europe's population growth included one additional innovation by the nineteenth century: it combined with rapid urbanization. More and more Western Europeans moved from countryside to city, and big cities grew most rapidly of all. By 1850, over half of all the people in England lived in cities, a first in human history. In one sense, this pattern seems inevitable growing numbers of people pressed available resources on the land, even when farmwork was combined with a bit of manufacturing, so people crowded into cities seeking work or other resources. Traditionally, however, death rates in cities surpassed those in the countryside by a large margin; cities had maintained population only through steady in-migration. Thus rapid urbanization should have reduced overall population growth, but by the middle of the nineteenth century this was no longer the case. Urban death rates remained high, particularly in the lower-class slums, but they began to decline rapidly.

The greater reliability of food supplies was a factor in the decline of urban death rates. Even more important were the gains in urban sanitation, as well as measures such as inspection of housing. Reformers, including enlightened doctors, began to study the causes of high death rates and to urge remediation. Even before the discovery of germs, beliefs that disease spread by "miasmas" (noxious forms of bad air) prompted attention to sewers and open garbage; Edwin Chadwick led an exemplary urban crusade for underground sewers in England in the 1830s. Gradually, public health provisions began to cut into customary urban mortality rates. By 1900, in some parts of Western Europe life expectancy in the cities began to surpass that of the rural areas. Industrial societies had figured out ways to combine large and growing cities with population growth, a development that would soon spread to other parts of the world.

1.According to paragraph 1, which of the following is true about Europe in the nineteenth century?

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【题目翻译】根据第1段,下列哪一项关于19世纪的欧洲是正确的? A:粮食产量的大幅度增长导致了工业化。 B:主要地区的人口变化速度相同。 C:生活水平已经达到世界大部分地区的水平。 D:人口的巨大增长使每个地区的农业产量都增加了。 【判定题型】:题目问的是文章中的具体细节信息,故根据题目问法可以判断本题为事实信息题。 【关键词定位】:根据关键词“ in the nineteenth century”,定位到Passage1。 意思是:19世纪下半叶,西方的欧洲人比世界上的大多数人享有更高的生活水平、活得更长久、更健康,这一切都离不开工业化,同时也离不开农业产出的大幅增长,因为农产品的增长才使工业化成为可能。在整个欧洲,人口从1800年的1.88亿增长到了1900年的4亿。到1900年为止,欧洲几乎每个地区的人口数量都在激增,但是每个主要地区都处于人口变化的不同阶段。 【逻辑分析】判断粮食和工业化之间的关系。 【选项分析】 A选项:食物产量的增长导致了工业化。正确,因为第一段第一句话中说“a vast increase in agricultural output without which industrialization would have been impossible”,说明农业产出是工业化的先决条件,故A选项为正确答案。 B选项:主要地区的人口变化节奏一致。错误,对应第一段最后一句中说的“but each major region was at a different stage of demographic change”,所以B选项与原文完全矛盾,排除。 C选项:生活水平提高到和世界其他地方一样的水平。错误,对应第一段第一句话中说的“Western Europeans by the latter half of the nineteenth century enjoyed higher standards of living and longer, healthier lives than most of the world’s peoples.”通过这个比较级可以明显看出欧洲人民的生活水平更高,故C排除。 D选项:人口的大量增长导致了各个地区农业产值的增长。根据第一段内容可知,是农业的发展,推动了人口增长。故D选项逻辑颠倒。排除。

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