文档介绍：雅思阅读真题 Version07107
SECTION 1

Tea and Industrial Revolution

A Alan Macfarlane thinks he could rewrite history. The professor of
anthropological science at King’s College, Cambridge has, like other
historians, spent decades trying to understand the enigma (、奥
秘) of the Industrial Revolution. Why did this particular important event - the
world-changing birth of industry - happen in Britain? And why did it happen
at the end of the 18th century?

B pares the question to a puzzle. He claims that there
were about 20 different factors and all of them needed to be present before the
revolution could happen. The chief conditions are to be found in history
textbooks. For industry to ‘take off’(v. 起飞), there needed to be the
technology and power to drive factories, large urban populations to provide
cheap labour easy transport to move goods around, an affluent ()
middle-class willing to buy mass-produced objects, a market-driven economy,
and a political system that allowed this to happen. While this was the case for
England, other nations, such as Japan, Holland and France also met some of
these criteria (). All these factors () must have been necessary but
not sufficient () to cause the revolution. Holland had everything
except coal, while China also had many of these factors.

C Most historians, however, are convinced () that one or two
missing factors are needed to solve the puzzle. The missing factors, he
proposes, are to be found in every kitchen cupboard. Tea and beer, two of the
nation’s favorite drinks, drove the revolution. Tannin, the active ingredient (n.
成分) in tea, and hops, used in making beer, both contain antiseptic (
的、杀菌的) properties. This -plus the fact that both are made with boiled
water- helped prevent epidemics (、传染病) of waterborne diseases,
such as dysentery, in densely populated urban areas. The theory initially