Paths to Modernization — History STD 11 Humanities — Question

How did the Qing dynasty try and meet the challenge posed by the Western powers?

"Undoubtedly the modern man made tremendous progress since coming into being." Justify the statement.

An Early Librar: In the iron age, the Assyrians of the north created an empire, at its height between 720 and 610 BCE, that stretched as far west as Egypt. The state economy was now a predatory one, extracting labour and tribute in the form of food, animals, metal and craft items from a vast subject population.
The great Assyrian kings, who had been immigrants, acknowledged the southern region, Babylonia, as the centre of high culture and the last of them, Assurbanipal (668-627 BCE), collected a library at his capital, Nineveh in the north. He made great efforts to gather tablets on history, epics, omen literature, astrology, hymns and poems. He sent his scribes south to find old tablets. Because scribes in the south were trained to read and write in schools where they all had to copy tablets by the dozen, there were towns in Babylonia where huge collections of tablets were created and acquired fame. And although Sumerian ceased to be spoken after about 1800 BCE, it continued to be taught in schools, through vocabulary texts, sign lists, bilingual (Sumerian and Akkadian) tablets, etc. So even in 650 BCE, cuneiform tablets written as far back as 2000 BCE were intelligible - and Assurbanipal's men knew where to look for early tablets or their copies.
Copies were made of important texts such as the Epic of Gilgamesh, the copier stating his name and writing the date. Some tablets ended with a reference to Assurbanipal:
'I, Assurbanipal, king of the universe, king of Assyria, on whom the gods bestowed vast intelligence, who could acquire the recondite details of scholarly erudition, I wrote down on tablets the wisdom of the gods. And I checked and collated the tablets. I placed them for the future in the library of the temple of my god, Nabu, at Nineveh, for my life and the well-being of my soul, and to sustain the foundations of my royal throne.
More important, there was cataloguing: a basket of tablets would have a clay label that read: 'n number of tablets about exorcism, written by X'. Assurbanipal's library had a total of some 1,000 texts, amounting to about 30,000 tablets, grouped according to subject.
Questions:

1. Which type of state economy was prevalent at that time?
2. Who established a huge library at Nineveh?
3.  

1. Name the place acknowledged as the centre of high culture by Assyrian.
2. Who helped Assurbanipal to collect huge tablets of different literary texts and how?

4. How many texts were in Assurbanipal's library?
5. Describe the achievements of Assurbanipal.

Discuss in detail about the places of residence of early humans.

Name a few navigators who threw light on their discoveries in the 15th and 16th centuries.

The Umayyads sought to legitimise their rule. Explain by giving examples.

Discuss the condition of workers in England in context of Industrial Revolution.

'If history relies upon written records produced by city-based literati, nomadic societies will always receive a hostile representation.' Would you agree with this statement? Does it explain the reason why Persian chronicles produced such inflated figures of casualties resulting from Mongol campaigns?

Describe in brief the achievements of Assurbanipal.