公共课英语一模拟题2020年(306).docVIP

公共课英语一模拟题2020年(306) (总分-10,考试时间60分钟) 阅读理解 [A]India runs like a thread through this tale. Cotton was being spun in the Indus Valley in 3000 BC: Herodotus admired its quality. Spinning and weaving cotton(the word comes from qutn in Arabic)were introduced to Europe by Muslim invaders in the tenth century. In India cotton as a cottage industry was so successful that it established a substantial market in Britain. This had two consequences. The first was technological innovation in the industrial north: spinning machines, the invention of the flying shuttle, the spinning jenny and power looms were the forerunners of the Industrial Revolution. The second, introduced in 1774 to assist English spinners and weavers, was protectionist legislation that made it illegal to sell imported cotton. [B]Slaves and wide open spaces in the southern states transformed America s economy, too. Capital, raised mainly in London, financed the expansion. By the late 1850s, 77% of the cotton consumed in Britain came from America. Profits soared on both sides of the Atlantic. Manchester became a centre of the universe, always feeding on cheap labour, mostly women, who, unlike slaves, were paid a wage, albeit a poor one. [C]Today the main sources of raw cotton are China(29%)and India(21%). Supported by grotesque subsidies($35 billion between 1995 and 2010), America clings on in third place. Producers sell to the new merchants of cotton: global retailers such as Gap and Adidas. Mr Beckert s story is both inspirational and utterly depressing, a reflection of the white-knuckle ride that has been the characteristic of globalisation through the centuries. [D]By 1800 mass-produced British cotton dominated world markets, including in India where the industry collapsed. In the three decades to 1820 innovation helped productivity in Britains new cotton factories increase 370 times. Mr Beckert, a history professor at Harvard, calls this new economic order War Capitalism as it is based on imperi