The Age of Industrialisation

1. Chapter at a Glance

When we think of industrialisation we picture factories, smoking chimneys and machines. But industrialisation was a slower, more uneven process than the images of "progress" suggest. Hand labour remained important, small workshops survived, and in colonies like India, industrial growth was shaped by colonial rule. This chapter explores proto-industrialisation, the coming of the factory, the pace of change and the role of hand labour in Britain, the effects on Indian weavers, the growth of factories in India, the importance of small-scale industries, and how markets for goods were created through advertising.

2. Before the Industrial Revolution

Even before factories appeared in England and Europe, there was large-scale industrial production for an international market. This phase is called proto-industrialisation.

• In the 17th and 18th centuries, merchants from towns in Europe moved to the countryside, supplying money to peasants and artisans and persuading them to produce for an international market.
• In towns, powerful urban crafts and trade guilds restricted entry of new people and regulated production, prices and competition; rulers granted them monopoly rights. So merchants turned to rural producers.
• Poor peasants and artisans, short of land, eagerly accepted the offers, since this allowed them to stay in the countryside, cultivate small plots and supplement falling incomes.
• A close relationship developed between town and countryside: merchants were based in towns, but work was done mostly in the countryside. In England, a merchant clothier bought wool from a wool stapler, carried it to spinners, then to weavers, fullers and dyers, and finally to London for finishing — a whole network of commercial exchanges controlled by merchants.

3. The Coming Up of the Factory

• The earliest factories in England came up by the 1730s, but their number multiplied only in the late 18th century.
• Cotton was the first symbol of the new era. Raw cotton imports into Britain rose from 2.5 million pounds in 1760 to 22 million pounds by 1787.
• Inventions in the 18th century increased efficiency in each step of production — carding, twisting and spinning, rolling. Richard Arkwright created the cotton mill, bringing all processes under one roof and management, allowing careful supervision, quality control and regulation of labour.
• By the early 19th century, factories became an intimate part of the English landscape — imposing new mills, magical new technology attracted attention.

The pace of industrial change

The most dynamic industries were cotton and metals. Cotton led the first phase of industrialisation up to the 1840s; then the iron and steel industry grew with the expansion of railways in England from the 1840s and in the colonies from the 1860s. By 1873 Britain was exporting iron and steel worth about £77 million, double the value of its cotton exports.

4. Hand Labour and Steam Power

In Victorian Britain there was no shortage of human labour. Poor peasants and vagrants moved to cities in large numbers in search of jobs, so industrialists had no problem of labour shortage or high wage costs. They did not want to introduce machines that needed large capital investment.

• In many industries demand for labour was seasonal — gas works and breweries were busy in cold months; bookbinders and printers before Christmas; ship repairers in winter. Industrialists preferred hand labour, employing workers for the season.
• A range of products could be produced only with hand labour; machines were oriented to producing uniform, standardised goods for a mass market. Demand in the market was often for goods with intricate designs and specific shapes — in mid-19th-century Britain, 500 varieties of hammers and 45 kinds of axes were produced, requiring human skill.
• The upper classes — the aristocrats and bourgeoisie — preferred things produced by hand, which symbolised refinement and class and were better finished and individually designed. Machine-made goods were for export to the colonies.
• In countries with labour shortage (like America), industrialists were keen on mechanical power.

Life of the workers

The abundance of labour affected workers' lives: when news of possible jobs spread, hundreds of workers came to cities; getting a job depended on existing networks of friendship and kin relations. Many job-seekers had to wait for weeks, spending nights under bridges or in night shelters. Seasonality meant prolonged periods without work. Wages increased somewhat in the early 19th century, but the average daily wage told little about workers' welfare; when prices rose sharply, real wages fell. At the best of times till the mid-19th century, about 10% of the urban population was extremely poor; in periods of economic slump such as the 1830s, unemployment rose to between 35 and 75% in different regions.

The fear of unemployment made workers hostile to new technology. When the Spinning Jenny (devised by James Hargreaves in 1764) — which let one worker turn many spindles at once and spin many threads at the same time — was introduced in the woollen industry, women who survived on hand spinning began attacking the new machines. After the 1840s, building activity intensified in cities, opening new opportunities; roads were widened, railway stations built, lines extended, tunnels dug, drainage and sewers laid, rivers embanked — the number of workers employed in the transport industry doubled in the 1840s and doubled again in the next 30 years.

5. Industrialisation in the Colonies

The age of Indian textiles

Before the age of machine industries, silk and cotton goods from India dominated the international market in textiles. Coarser cotton was produced in many countries, but finer varieties often came from India. Armenian and Persian merchants took goods from Punjab to Afghanistan, eastern Persia and Central Asia; bales of fine textiles were carried on camel back via the north-west frontier, through mountain passes and across deserts. 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; Masulipatnam on the Coromandel coast and Hoogly in Bengal had trade links with South-East Asian ports. A variety of Indian merchants and bankers financed production, carried goods and supplied exporters.

By the 1750s this network controlled by Indian merchants was breaking down. European companies gained power — securing concessions from local courts and monopoly rights to trade. Surat and Hoogly decayed; Bombay and Calcutta grew. The new ports came under the control of European companies and goods were carried in European ships.

What happened to weavers?

• After the East India Company established political power in the 1760s and 1770s, it tried to eliminate existing traders and brokers and establish more direct control over weavers.
• It appointed a paid servant called the gomastha to supervise weavers, collect supplies and examine the quality of cloth.
• It prevented Company weavers from dealing with other buyers through a system of advances: once an order was placed, weavers were given loans to buy raw material, and those who took loans had to hand over the cloth to the gomastha.
• Gomasthas were often outsiders with no long-term social link with the village; they acted arrogantly, marched into villages with sepoys and peons, and punished weavers for delays — often beating and flogging them. Weavers lost the space to bargain for prices; the price they received from the Company was miserably low. In many places in Carnatic and Bengal, weavers deserted villages, migrated, revolted, or refused loans and closed workshops, taking to agricultural labour.

Manchester comes to India

In 1772, Henry Patullo, a Company official, ventured to say that the demand for Indian textiles could never reduce, since no other nation produced goods of the same quality. Yet by the beginning of the 19th century Indian textile exports began a long decline. As cotton industries developed in England, industrial groups worried about imports and pressured the government to impose import duties on cotton textiles so that Manchester goods could sell in Britain without competition. They also persuaded the Company to sell British manufactures in Indian markets. Exports of British cotton goods increased dramatically; by 1850 cotton piece-goods constituted over 31% of the value of Indian imports, and by the 1870s over 50%.

Indian weavers faced two problems at once: their export market collapsed, and the local market shrank, being glutted with cheap Manchester imports produced by machines at lower cost. By the 1860s they faced a new problem: they could not get a sufficient supply of good-quality raw cotton, as the American Civil War cut supplies to Britain and raw cotton exports from India shot up, raising prices. And by the end of the 19th century, factories in India too began production, flooding the market with machine goods.

6. Factories Come Up in India

The early entrepreneurs

Many early entrepreneurs had made fortunes through trade with China — exporting opium and importing tea. Dwarkanath Tagore of Bengal turned to industrial investment in the 1830s and 1840s and set up six joint-stock companies. In Bombay, Parsis like Dinshaw Petit and Jamsetjee Nusserwanjee Tata, who built huge industrial empires, accumulated initial wealth partly from exports to China and partly from raw cotton shipments to England. Seth Hukumchand, a Marwari businessman who set up the first Indian jute mill in Calcutta in 1917, also traded with China, as did the father and grandfather of the industrialist G.D. Birla. Others were Madras merchants trading with Burma, the Middle East and East Africa. But European managing agencies — Andrew Yule, Bird Heiglers & Co., Jardine Skinner & Co. — dominated large industries: they mobilised capital, set up joint-stock companies and managed them, mainly in tea plantations, coal mining and jute mills.

Where did workers come from?

Most workers came from neighbouring districts — peasants and artisans who found no work in the village. In 1911, over 50% of workers in the Bombay cotton industries came from the neighbouring district of Ratnagiri; mills of Kanpur got most textile hands from villages within the district. Millworkers moved between village and city, returning for harvests and festivals. Getting jobs was difficult; industrialists usually employed a jobber to get new recruits — an old and trusted worker who brought people from his village, ensured them jobs, helped them settle and gave them money in times of crisis. The jobber became a person with power and authority, demanding money and gifts and controlling workers' lives.

The peculiarities of industrial growth

• European managing agencies were interested in certain kinds of products, mainly for export trade, not the Indian market.
• When Indian businessmen set up industries in the late 19th century, they avoided competing with Manchester goods in the Indian market. They produced coarse cotton yarn (thread) rather than fabric, exporting it to China; yarn was also used by handloom weavers in India.
• From the first decade of the 20th century, the Swadeshi movement mobilised people to boycott foreign cloth; industrial groups organised to demand tariff protection. Exports of Indian yarn to China declined as Chinese and Japanese mills flooded China.
• The First World War was a turning point: British mills were busy with war production, Manchester imports into India declined, and Indian mills suddenly had a vast home market; they also supplied war needs — jute bags, army cloth, tents, leather boots, horse and mule saddles. After the war, Manchester never recaptured its old position in India.

7. Small-scale Industries Predominate

While factory industries grew steadily after the war, large-scale industries formed only a small segment of the economy. In 1911, 67% of large industries were located in Bengal and Bombay; elsewhere small-scale production predominated. Only about 5% of the industrial labour force worked in registered factories in 1911, and 10% in 1931. Handloom cloth production expanded steadily in the 20th century, nearly trebling between 1900 and 1940. How? Weavers adopted new technology like the fly shuttle, which increased productivity per worker (by the third decade of the 20th century, weavers in many regions such as Travancore, Madras, Mysore, Cochin and Bengal used it). Mill cloth could not easily imitate specialised weaves. Coarse cloth weavers faced competition, but weavers producing finer varieties — saris with intricate borders, traditional cloth for weddings — survived better. The rich bought these even in times of famine.

8. Market for Goods

New producers had to persuade people to buy new products. One way was advertisements, which make products appear desirable and necessary and shape the minds of people, creating new needs. From the beginning of the industrial age, ads have appeared in newspapers, magazines, hoardings, street walls and television.

• When Manchester industrialists began selling cloth in India, they put labels on cloth bundles. The label stated the place of manufacture — "Made in Manchester" in bold letters — assuring buyers of quality; labels also carried images and beautiful illustrations, often of Indian gods and goddesses (Krishna, Saraswati), as if to give divine approval to the goods and make them familiar to Indian buyers.
• By the late 19th century manufacturers printed calendars to popularise products. Unlike newspapers, calendars were used even by people who could not read; they hung in tea shops and poor people's homes as much as in offices. Images of gods, as well as figures of important personages, emperors and nawabs, adorned calendars.
• When Indian manufacturers advertised, the nationalist message was clear: if you care for the nation, buy products that Indians produce — advertisements became a vehicle of the nationalist message of swadeshi.

9. Master Table: Key Terms

10. Master Summary Table

Chart — raw cotton imports into Britain (million pounds):

11. Mind Map

12. Tips and Tricks

13. Important One-liners

• Proto-industrialisation happened in the countryside.
• Richard Arkwright created the cotton mill.
• Only 321 steam engines existed in England in 1801.
• James Hargreaves devised the Spinning Jenny in 1764.
• Gomasthas supervised weavers for the Company.
• Surat, Masulipatnam and Hoogly were pre-colonial ports.
• The first cotton mill in India was set up in Bombay in 1854.
• Dwarkanath Tagore set up six joint-stock companies.
• Jobbers recruited workers for mills.
• The fly shuttle raised weavers' productivity.
• Manchester labels carried images of Indian gods.

14. Previous-Year-Pattern Questions with Detailed Answers

15. Quick Revision Summary