Class 8- History - Ch1 - How, When and Where (NCERT Solutions)

Q1. State whether true or false:
(a) James Mill divided Indian history into three periods – Hindu, Muslim, Christian.
(b) Official documents help us understand what the people of the country think.
(c) The British thought surveys were important for effective administration.

Answer:
(a) False (James Mill divided Indian history into three periods - Hindu, Muslim and British)
(b) False
(c) True

Q2. What is the problem with the periodisation of Indian history that James Mill offers?

Answer:  James Mill divided the period of Indian History into communal lines. He had the wrong notion about the achievements of Indians during the ancient and medieval period. According to him  all sorts of developments and progress made by Indians were due to colonial rule. He depicted a prejudiced version of Indian history.





Q3. Why did the British preserve official documents?

Answer:  They preserved the documents to maintain a permanent record of the official documents. They carefully preserved them.



Q4. How will the information historians get from old newspapers be different from that found in police reports?

Answer: The Police reports were not very trustworthy and are different from the information published in newspapers because the police was merely a puppet of the colonial government. They wrote the things in government’s favour only and hid the true facts.

Q5: Who was the first Governor-General of India?
Answer: Warren Hastings became the first Governor-General of India in 1773.

Q6: Why do we try and divide history into different periods? 

Answer:

1. It is an attempt to capture the characteristics of a time, its central features as they appear to us.
2. To demarcate the difference between periods which become important.
3. To reflect our ideas about the past. They show how we see the significance of the change from one period to the next.

Q7: What do you mean by the term 'colonisation'? 

Answer: The subjugation of one country by another leads to these kinds of political, economic, social and cultural changes is called colonisation.

Q8: When was The National Archives of India set up?

Answer: 1920 at the time when New Delhi was built by the British.

Q9: Why did Surveys become common practice under the colonial administration in India?
Answer: The practice of surveying became common practice under the colonial administration because The British believed that a country had to be properly known before it could be effectively administered.

Q10: What types of surveys were conducted by the colonial administration in India?

Answer:
By the early nineteenth century, detailed surveys were being carried out to map the entire country.

1. In the villages, revenue surveys were conducted. The effort was to know the topography, the soil quality, the flora, the fauna, the local histories, and the cropping pattern.
2. The objective was to record all the facts seen as necessary to know about to administer the region.
3. By the end of the nineteenth century, Census operations were held every ten years. These prepared detailed records of the number of people in all the provinces of India, noting information on castes, religions and occupation. 
4. There were many other surveys – botanical surveys, zoological surveys, archaeological surveys, anthropological surveys, forest surveys. 

Q11: Who produced the first map of India under British colonial period? Who asked for it?

Answer: James Rennel, 1782. Rennel was asked by Robert Clive to produce maps of Hindustan.