The Age Of Industrialisation

Define proto-industrialisation. 

   Even before factories began to dot the landscape in England and Europe, there was large-scale industrial production for an international market. This was not based on factories. Many historians now refer to this phase of industrialisation as proto-industrialisation. 

How rapid was the process of industrialisation? Does industrialisation mean only the growth of factory industries?  

1. The most dynamic industries in Britain were clearly cotton and metals. Growing at a rapid pace, cotton was the leading sector in the first phase of industrialisation up to the 1840s. After that, the iron and steel industry led the way. 

2. The new industries could not easily displace traditional industries. Textiles was a dynamic sector, but a large portion of the output was produced not within factories, but outside, within domestic units. 

3. The pace of change in the ‘traditional’ industries was not set by steam-powered cotton or metal industries, but they did not remain entirely stagnant either. Seemingly ordinary and small innovations were the basis of growth in many non-mechanised sectors such as food processing, building, pottery, glass work, tanning, furniture making, and production of implements. 

4. Technological changes occurred slowly. They did not spread dramatically across the industrial landscape. New technology was expensive and merchants and industrialists were cautious about using it. The machines often broke down and repair was costly. They were not as effective as their inventors and manufacturers claimed. 

Why did some industrialists in nineteenth-century Europe prefer hand labour over machines? 

1. A range of products could be produced only with hand labour. 

2. Machines were oriented to producing uniforms, and standardised goods for a mass market. But, the demand in the market was often for goods with intricate designs and specific shapes. 

3. In mid-nineteenth-century Britain, for instance, 500 varieties of hammers were produced and 45 kinds of axes. These required human skills, not mechanical technology. 

4. In Victorian Britain, the upper classes – the aristocrats and the bourgeoisie – preferred things produced by hand. 

5. Handmade products came to symbolise refinement and class. They were better finished, individually produced, and carefully designed. Machine-made goods were for export to the colonies. 

The port of Surat declined by the end of the eighteenth century. Give reasons. 

1. A vibrant sea trade operated through the main pre-colonial ports. Surat on the Gujarat coast connected India to the Gulf and Red Sea Ports; Masulipatam on the Coromandel coast and Hoogly in Bengal had trade links with Southeast Asian ports. 

2. By the 1750s this network, controlled by Indian merchants, was breaking down. 

3. The European companies gradually gained power – first securing a variety of concessions from local courts, then the monopoly rights to trade. 

4. This resulted in a decline of the old ports of Surat and Hoogly through which local merchants had operated. Exports from these ports fell dramatically, the credit that had financed the earlier trade began drying up, and the local bankers slowly went bankrupt. 

5. While Surat and Hoogly decayed, Bombay and Calcutta grew. This shift from the old ports to the new ones was an indicator of the growth of colonial power. 

In 1811-12 piece-goods accounted for 33 per cent of India’s exports; by 1850-51 it was no more than 3 per cent. Why did this happen? What were its implications? 

1. As cotton industries developed in England, industrial groups began worrying about imports from other countries. 

2. They pressurised the government to impose import duties on cotton textiles so that Manchester goods could sell in Britain without facing any competition from outside. 

3. At the same time industrialists persuaded the East India Company to sell British manufactures in Indian markets as well. 

4. Exports of British cotton goods increased dramatically in the early nineteenth century. At the end of the eighteenth century, there had been virtually no import of cotton piece-goods into India. 

5. By 1850 cotton piece-goods constituted over 31 per cent of the value of Indian imports; and by the 1870s this figure was over 50 per cent. 

Consequences: 

1. Cotton weavers in India thus faced two problems at the same time: their export market collapsed, and the local market shrank, being glutted with Manchester imports. 

2. Produced by machines at lower costs, the imported cotton goods were so cheap that weavers could not easily compete with them. 

3. By the 1850s, reports from most weaving regions of India narrated stories of decline and desolation. 

4. Weavers faced a new problem. They could not get a sufficient supply of raw cotton of good quality. When the American Civil War broke out and cotton supplies from the US were cut off, Britain turned to India. 

5. As raw cotton exports from India increased, the price of raw cotton shot up. Weavers in India were starved of supplies and forced to buy raw cotton at exorbitant prices. In this, situation weaving could not pay. 

In the twentieth century, handloom cloth production expanded steadily: almost trebling between 1900 and 1940. How did this happen? 

1. So, by the second decade of the twentieth century we find weavers using looms with a fly shuttle. This increased productivity per worker, speeded up production and reduced labour demand. 

2. Amongst weavers some produced coarse cloth while others wove finer varieties. The coarser cloth was bought by the poor and its demand fluctuated violently. 

3. The demand for the finer varieties bought by the well-to-do was more stable. Eg: Famines did not affect the sale of Banarasi or Baluchari saris. 

4. Weavers' life and labour was integral to the process of industrialisation.