Class 10 History · Chapter 4 NotesThe Age of Industrialisation

Factories were not the only way industrial production took place. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, merchants from European towns moved to the countryside and gave money to peasants and artisans to produce goods for an international market. This early phase is called proto-industrialisation. Merchants could not expand production in towns because urban crafts and trade guilds controlled production, prices and entry into trade. In the countryside, poor peasants and artisans whose common lands were disappearing eagerly accepted advances. They worked within their family farms, and a merchant clothier controlled hundreds of workers through spinners, weavers, fullers and dyers. London became a finishing centre, and the whole system was part of a network of commercial exchanges.

• Proto-industrialisationlarge-scale industrial production for an international market, not based on factories.
• Guildsassociations of producers that trained craftspeople, controlled production, regulated competition and prices, and restricted entry into trade.
• Merchants based in towns, but work done mostly in the countryside.

The earliest factories in England came up by the 1730s, but their number multiplied only in the late eighteenth century. Cotton was the first symbol of the new era. Britain's import of raw cotton rose from 2.5 million pounds in 1760 to 22 million pounds in 1787. A series of inventions improved carding, twisting, spinning and rolling, and Richard Arkwright created the cotton mill, bringing all processes under one roof and management. Yet industrial change was not rapid. Cotton and metals were the most dynamic industries, but even at the end of the nineteenth century less than 20 per cent of the total workforce was employed in technologically advanced sectors. Traditional industries grew through small innovations, and new technology like the steam engine spread slowly because it was expensive and risky.

• Arkwright's cotton mill allowed supervision, quality control and regulation of labour under one roof.
• Cotton led industrialisation up to the 1840s; iron and steel led after that with railway expansion.
• In 1800 there were no more than 321 steam engines all over England.

In Victorian Britain there was no shortage of human labour, so industrialists did not want machines that replaced workers and needed large capital. Many industries had seasonal demand, such as gas works, breweries, book-binding and ship repair, and preferred hand labour. Machines produced standardised goods, but the market wanted intricate designs, and the upper classes preferred handmade products as symbols of refinement. In countries with labour shortage, like nineteenth-century America, industrialists used mechanical power. Workers' lives were hard. Job-seekers tramped to cities, depended on friendship and kin networks, and waited weeks for work. Seasonality meant long periods without work, and in the 1830s unemployment rose to between 35 and 75 per cent in different regions. Fear of unemployment made workers hostile to new technology, and women attacked the Spinning Jenny in the woollen industry.

• Spinning Jennydevised by James Hargreaves in 1764, it speeded up spinning and reduced labour demand.
• After the 1840s, building activity in cities opened more employment in transport and construction.
• Wages alone did not decide welfare; the number of days of work also mattered.

Before machine industries, Indian silk and cotton goods dominated the international market. Armenian and Persian merchants carried fine textiles to Central Asia and West Asia, while Surat, Masulipatam and Hoogly had vibrant sea trade. Indian merchants and bankers financed production and supplied exporters. By the 1750s this network was breaking down as European companies gained concessions and monopoly rights. Surat's trade fell from Rs 16 million in the late seventeenth century to Rs 3 million by the 1740s, and Bombay and Calcutta grew. After the East India Company gained political power, it appointed gomasthas to supervise weavers, collect supplies and examine cloth. Advances tied weavers to the Company, and clashes with gomasthas increased. Many weavers deserted villages, migrated, or took to agricultural labour.

• Gomasthaa paid servant appointed by the East India Company to supervise weavers, collect supplies and examine the quality of cloth.
• Sepoythe British pronunciation of sipahi, an Indian soldier in British service.
• By 1850-51, piece-goods were only 3 per cent of India's exports, down from 33 per cent in 1811-12.

As cotton industries developed in England, industrial groups pressed the government to impose import duties and persuaded the East India Company to sell British manufactures in India. Indian weavers faced collapsing export markets and shrinking local markets glutted with cheap Manchester imports. By the 1860s, the American Civil War cut off US cotton supplies, Britain turned to India, raw cotton prices shot up, and Indian weavers were starved of raw cotton. Factories in India began production by the late nineteenth century. The first cotton mill in Bombay came up in 1854 and went into production two years later. Jute mills came up in Bengal, the Elgin Mill started in Kanpur in the 1860s, and Ahmedabad's first cotton mill was set up soon after. By 1874, Madras had its first spinning and weaving mill.

• By 1850, cotton piece-goods were over 31 per cent of the value of Indian imports; by the 1870s, over 50 per cent.
• First cotton mill in Bombay1854, production from 1856.
• First jute mill in Bengal1855.

Many business groups began with trade with China. Indians became junior players in the opium and tea trade, providing finance, procuring supplies and shipping consignments. In Bengal, Dwarkanath Tagore made his fortune in the China trade and set up six joint-stock companies in the 1830s and 1840s. In Bombay, Parsis like Dinshaw Petit and Jamsetjee Nusserwanjee Tata accumulated wealth from exports to China and raw cotton shipments to England. Seth Hukumchand set up the first Indian jute mill in Calcutta in 1917. European Managing Agencies like Bird Heiglers & Co., Andrew Yule, and Jardine Skinner & Co. controlled a large sector of Indian industries till the First World War. Factory workers came mostly from nearby districts, and over 50 per cent of Bombay cotton workers in 1911 came from Ratnagiri. Jobbers, usually old and trusted workers, recruited new hands and gained authority and power.

• Dwarkanath Tagoreset up six joint-stock companies in the 1830s and 1840s.
• J.N. Tata set up the first iron and steel works in India at Jamshedpur in 1912.
• Jobberan old and trusted worker who recruited new workers, helped them settle, and provided money in times of crisis.

European Managing Agencies invested in tea, coffee, mining, indigo and jute, mostly for export. Early Indian cotton mills produced coarse yarn rather than fabric to avoid competing with Manchester goods. From 1906, Indian yarn exports to China declined, so industrialists shifted to cloth production, which doubled between 1900 and 1912. The First World War created a new situation: British mills were busy with war production, Manchester imports declined, and Indian mills supplied a vast home market and war needs. After the war, Britain could not recapture its old position. Yet large industries formed only a small segment of the economy. In 1911, about 67 per cent of large industries were in Bengal and Bombay, and only 5 per cent of the total industrial labour force worked in registered factories. Handloom cloth production almost trebled between 1900 and 1940, helped by the fly shuttle and other small innovations.

• Fly shuttlea mechanical device moved by ropes and pulleys that placed the weft into the warp, enabling weavers to operate large looms and weave wide cloth.
• By 1941, over 35 per cent of handlooms in India were fitted with fly shuttles.
• Finer varieties like Banarasi and Baluchari saris survived because mills could not imitate specialised weaves.

New products needed new consumers, and advertisements played a key role from the beginning of the industrial age. Manchester industrialists put labels on cloth bundles to make the place of manufacture and company name familiar, and to mark quality. Labels carried images of Indian gods and goddesses, giving divine approval and making foreign goods appear familiar. By the late nineteenth century, manufacturers printed calendars, which reached even people who could not read and were hung in tea shops, homes and offices. Figures of emperors and nawabs were used to suggest royal quality. Indian manufacturers used advertisements to spread the nationalist message of swadeshi, urging people to buy products made in India.

• Labels carried 'MADE IN MANCHESTER' to build confidence in quality.
• Calendars were used by people who could not read, so advertisements reached a wide audience.
• Indian mill cloth labels showed goddesses offering cloth and asking people to use things made in India.