HISTORY THE AGE OF INDUSTRIALISATION

The Age of Industrialisation

Conditions Existing before the Industrial Revolution

Even before the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in England, there was industrial production for
an international market. This production was however not factory based and was known as Protoindustrialisation (proto means original or primitive form).
During the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, merchants visited the countryside and villages
asking farmers to grow for international markets. These merchants often provided money to these
famers.
Merchants and traders moved to the countryside as the guilds of workers, producers and weavers
were very strong.
In the countryside, farmers readily agreed to produce for international markets as it supplemented their
income. Production and trade were controlled by merchants, with one merchant approximately
employing 2025 workers for weaving, spinning and dying the cloth.

The Beginning and the Growth of the Factory System

Many factories began to open up in eighteenth-century England because of the several changes which
took place then. One of these changes was technological inventions.
The creation of the cotton mill by Richard Arkwright enabled the production of cotton cloth on a large
scale in factories. Unlike in the countryside where each task was done separately at different places,
work in the factories was managed under one roof.
Britain saw rapid growth of industrialisation. However, this assumed the following forms:
o Factories came up at different places, but traditional industries
were also operating on a large scale.
o Traditional industries were not based on machine production,
but they were also not stagnant. Small little innovations were
taking place in traditional industries as well.
o Technological changes took place gradually and slowly
because new machinery was expensive and it was not easy to
repair them. For example, it took many years before the steam A typical factory in England in the
eighteenth century
engine began to be used widely in industries.
o Historians thus accept that a worker in the nineteenth century
was not a machine operator but a traditional craftsperson.

Why Human Labour?

Britain had no shortage of labour. Adequate availability of labour means that the wages were low.
Industrialists also preferred human labour in the beginning as it was cheap compared to the machines
which were costly.
Some forms of work in industries were seasonal, and industrialists preferred human labourers.
Certain work required only manual labour. For example, cloth with intricate designs could be produced
only by hand and not by machine. There was a high demand for such cloth.
The upper and aristocratic class in Britain also preferred expensive handmade goods.

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HISTORY THE AGE OF INDUSTRIALISATION

Life of Human Labourers

Because labour was in abundance in Britain, many people migrated from the countryside to the cities
in search of employment.
The possibility of getting a job also depended on the network of
friendship and kinship.
There were also long periods of unemployment for people who
were working in seasonal industries.
The wages of workers increased in the early nineteenth century,
but the prices of goods also increased simultaneously.
Many labourers in England migrated from
The fear of unemployment increased the hostility of the workers rural to urban areas in search of job
opportunities.
towards the introduction of machines in factories. For example,
when the Spinning Jenny was introduced, women who depended
on spinning for earning their livelihood attacked the new machines. Such conflicts continued for a long
time.

Industrialisation in India
India before Industrialisation
India was known for its cotton and silk goods before the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in Britain.
India produced the finer quality of cotton. Surat in Gujarat, Masulipatnam in coastal Andhra Pradesh and
Hooghly in West Bengal were important port towns of India from where goods were exported to the other
countries. Many bankers and Indian merchants financed the trading activities.

India during Industrialisation

As the European companies gained power in India and received

trading rights, they gradually established their own monopolies in
trade.
This resulted in the decline in the old ports of Surat and Hooghly.
Exports from these ports fell considerably and the local bankers
gradually became bankrupt.
The new cities of Bombay and Calcutta grew under the colonial
rule. The trade was controlled by the Europeans and was carried
on by European ships.
The traditional handicraft workers and
This led to the decline in many trading houses and the rise of new weavers began to loose work as a result
of British colonial policies.
business houses.
After the British East India Company established its political
control over India and eliminated the other East India Companies, it established its monopoly over
buying and selling of cotton and took various steps to ensure regular supply of cotton and silk. This
was achieved by the Company by implementing the following steps:
o The Company appointed their own servants called gomastha to supervise the work of weavers, to
collect supplies and to check the quality of cloth. This restricted the powers of the traders and
merchants.
o The above step also prevented the Company weavers from dealing and negotiating with other
buyers. The Company paid advances to the weavers to produce cloth.

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HISTORY THE AGE OF INDUSTRIALISATION

In many villages, there were clashes between the weavers and the gomasthas. Earlier, the supply
merchants were closely related to the weavers and looked after their needs at the time of financial
crises. The gomasthas however had no social relationship with the weavers, and hence, they acted
arrogantly and were even accompanied by the police and punished the weavers for the delay in work.
As a result, many villagers left their villages and fled to other villages and set up looms there.
When the textile industries in England began to produce cloth, need was felt for imposing import duties
on foreign cloth which entered its markets. Thus, various import duties were levied on Indian cloth
also. As a result, the Indian weavers suffered.
The English companies in order to sell their goods persuaded the British Government to remove all
import duties on English cloth. The English machine-made cloth now entered the Indian markets.
Because these cloths were cheap, the condition of weavers in India became worse as their export
market collapsed and the local market was flooded with cheap British cloth.
In the 1860s, the weavers faced another problem. They were not able to procure cotton of good quality
as during the American Civil War, the Government exported much of the good quality Indian cotton to
Britain.

Factories in India
By the mid-nineteenth century, factories began to be established in India. The first cotton mill
in Bombay began production in 1856. At the same time, many jute mills were opened in
Bengal. In 1974, the first spinning and weaving mill was established in Madras.
In the eighteenth century, many Indian industrialists were profited by Indias opium trade
with China.
Dwarkanath Tagore rose to fame after he became a major player in Indias trade with

China.
Parsis such as Dinshaw Petit and J. N. Tata became rich because of exports to China
and export of raw cotton to Britain. Later, they built huge industrial empires in India.
Seth Hukumchand and Shiv Narayan Birla (grandfather of G. D. Birla) also profited
from trade with China.
Most of the industrialists had only limited opportunities for carrying out trade in India
because of the monopoly of the English business houses in India. They usually had to
engage in supplying raw materials to Britain. While Indian financiers often provided
capital to European agencies, the latter made all investments and took business
decisions.

Dwarkanath
Tagore

Jamsetji Tata set up

the first iron and
steel industry in
India.

Workers in India

Many farmers, artisans and peasants who were not able to find work in villages migrated to industrial
cities in search of job opportunities. In 1911, more than half of the workers in the Bombay cotton
industries came from the district of Ratnagiri.
Most of the mill workers returned to their villages during the period of harvests.
Later, many workers from the United Provinces (roughly present Uttar Pradesh) travelled great
distances to Bombay and Calcutta in search of employment opportunities.
However, getting jobs was always difficult and bribes were paid to the companys recruiter for getting
jobs.

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HISTORY THE AGE OF INDUSTRIALISATION

Industrial Growth in India

Many European agencies traded in plantations, mining businesses and exporting of raw materials
(indigo, jute and cotton) to Europe.
Indian businessmen avoided competing with Manchester goods which flooded the Indian markets.
The beginning of the Swadeshi and Boycott movements gave a huge impetus to Indian industries.
Because the export of Indian yarn to China declined, the industries began to manufacture cloth in
India.
During the First World War, when British mills began to manufacture war materials and the exports
from Manchester declined, the Indian industries flourished as they had vast home markets to supply
their goods.
Further, the Indian industries supplied jute bags, cloth for army uniforms, tents, leather boots and
many other items to the war front. The industrial production in India boomed during the war period.

Small Scale Industries

More than half of the industries in 1911 were located in Bombay and Calcutta. There were small-scale
production units, workshops and household units which were functioning all over the country.
In the twentieth century, the handloom production expanded because of the following reasons:
o Weavers used new technology for weaving clothes. Many weavers were using looms with the fly
shuttle which increased a workers productivity. Many other technological innovations also helped
the weavers to compete with the mill produce.
o Weavers manufactured both coarse and fine cloth. While the coarse cloth was bought by the poor,
the fine cloth was bought by the rich. The sale of fine cloth such as Benarasi sarees did not decline
even during famines as the rich could still afford to buy these.
o Mills also could not imitate special designs such as sarees with woven borders.
Weavers continued to make cloth though they were not a prosperous class, and they often lived hard
lives.

Creating Markets for Goods

Advertisements are an important tool for marketing and selling goods in the markets.
Manchester cloth which came into the Indian markets had the label Made in Manchester. This was to
make consumers confident of the quality of the produce which they were purchasing.
Labels also carried images which appealed to the people to buy the goods.
By the late nineteenth century, many manufacturers were printing calendars to increase the popularity
of their products. Besides the images of the advertised products, these calendars had images of gods,
important and renowned personalities and royal figures. They were hung in houses, offices and shops.
Advertisements gradually became a tool for selling Indian products and began to carry nationalistic
messages such as Use Swadeshi goods.

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