The Age of Industrialisation

1. The triumphant image of the machine

The chapter opens with two pictures. In 1900 the music publisher E.T. Paull produced a cover called 'Dawn of the Century' — an angel of progress on a winged wheel, with a railway, camera, printing press and factory behind her. A trade magazine image (1901) showed two magicians: Aladdin from the Orient, who built a palace with his magic lamp (the past, the East), and the modern mechanic with his tools, who builds bridges, ships and high-rise buildings (the West, modernity).

The chapter answers by looking first at Britain (the first industrial nation) and then at India, where industrial change was shaped by colonial rule.

2. Before the Industrial Revolution — proto-industrialisation

We usually link industrialisation with factories. But even before factories dotted England, there was large-scale industrial production for an international market that was not based on factories. Historians call this proto-industrialisation ('proto' = the first or early form of something).

Why did merchants go to the countryside? In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, town merchants wanted to expand production but could not, because of the powerful trade guilds. Guilds were associations of producers that trained craftspeople, controlled production, regulated prices and competition, and restricted the entry of new people. Rulers granted guilds monopoly rights to produce and trade in specific products. So merchants turned to the countryside.

Why did peasants agree? This was the age of enclosures — open fields and commons were disappearing. Cottagers and poor peasants who once depended on common land now needed extra income. Their tiny plots could not employ the whole family. So when merchants offered advances to produce goods, they eagerly agreed. They could stay in the village, farm their plots, and use family labour fully.

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 eighteenth century. The first symbol of the new era was cotton. Britain's import of raw cotton soared from 2.5 million pounds (1760) to 22 million pounds (1787).

A series of inventions (carding, twisting, spinning, rolling) increased output per worker. Richard Arkwright then created the cotton mill. Earlier cloth production was spread across village households; now the costly new machines could be set up and maintained in a mill, and all the processes were brought together under one roof and one management.

By the early nineteenth century, factories became an intimate part of the English landscape. The new mills were so imposing that people were dazzled and concentrated only on them, almost forgetting the bylanes and workshops where much production still continued.

4. The pace of industrial change — slower than you think

Was industrialisation rapid? The chapter gives four points showing it was actually slow and uneven.

Conclusion: historians now recognise that the typical worker of the mid-nineteenth century was not a machine operator but a traditional craftsperson and labourer.

5. Hand labour and steam power — why hands stayed

In Victorian Britain there was no shortage of human labour. Poor peasants and vagrants flocked to the cities looking for work, so wages were low. Industrialists had no problem of labour shortage and did not want to spend on machines. The reasons hand labour was preferred:

• Seasonal demand: in industries like gas works, breweries, book-binding, printing and ship-repair, demand rose only in certain seasons. Industrialists preferred to hire hands for the season rather than buy machines that stood idle.
• Variety and design: machines made uniform, standardised goods for a mass market. But the market often wanted goods of intricate design and specific shape. In mid-nineteenth-century Britain, 500 varieties of hammers and 45 kinds of axes were produced — needing human skill, not machines.
• Upper-class taste: the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie preferred handmade things, which symbolised refinement and class. Machine-made goods were largely for export to the colonies.

In countries with a labour shortage, like nineteenth-century America, industrialists eagerly used machines. Britain, with plenty of cheap hands, did not need to.

6. Life of the workers

The abundance of labour worsened the lives of workers. Getting a job depended on networks of friendship and kinship — if you had a relative or friend in a factory, you got work faster. Many job-seekers waited weeks, sleeping under bridges or in Night Refuges and Casual Wards (run by the Poor Law authorities).

• Seasonality of work meant long jobless spells. After the busy season many returned to the countryside or hunted for odd jobs.
• Wages rose somewhat in the early nineteenth century, but the figures hide much. During the long Napoleonic War, prices rose and the real value of wages fell. Income depended on the number of days of work, not just the wage rate.
• At the best of times till the mid-nineteenth century, about 10 per cent of the urban population was extremely poor. In slumps like the 1830s, unemployment ran between 35 and 75 per cent.

7. Industrialisation in the colonies — the age of Indian textiles

Now the focus shifts to India, looking at textiles. Before machine industries, silk and cotton goods from India dominated the international textile market. Fine Indian cottons were prized everywhere.

The old trade network: Armenian and Persian merchants carried goods overland from Punjab to Afghanistan, Persia and Central Asia (camel caravans across the north-west frontier). By sea, Surat (Gujarat) connected India to the Gulf and Red Sea ports; Masulipatam (Coromandel coast) and Hoogly (Bengal) linked to Southeast Asia. Supply merchants gave advances to weavers and carried cloth to the ports, where brokers dealt with shippers.

8. What happened to the weavers? The gomastha and advances

At first, after the East India Company's power grew in the 1760s–70s, textile exports from India did not decline — British cotton industries had not yet expanded, and Indian fine cloth was in great demand. So the Company tried to ensure regular supplies and eliminate competition through a series of steps.

Effects on weavers: many weavers leased out their farm land and devoted all their time to weaving (the whole family worked). Soon there were clashes. The new gomasthas were outsiders with no village ties; they acted arrogantly, marched in with sepoys and peons, and beat or flogged weavers for delays. Weavers lost the space to bargain, got miserably low prices, and were tied down by loans. Many deserted villages, revolted, or gave up weaving for agricultural labour.

9. Manchester comes to India

In 1772 Henry Patullo, a Company official, claimed demand for Indian textiles could never fall. Yet exports declined sharply: piece-goods were 33 per cent of India's exports in 1811–12, but only 3 per cent by 1850–51.

Why? As cotton industries developed in England, industrial groups pressed the government to put import duties on cotton textiles, so Manchester goods sold without competition. They also persuaded the East India Company to sell British goods in India. Imports of British cotton goods rose dramatically — cotton piece-goods were over 31 per cent of Indian imports by 1850 and over 50 per cent by the 1870s.

By the end of the nineteenth century came yet another blow — factories in India began flooding the market with machine-made goods.

10. Factories come up — the early entrepreneurs

The first cotton mill in Bombay came up in 1854 (production from 1856). The first jute mill in Bengal was set up in 1855; the Elgin Mill in Kanpur and the first cotton mill of Ahmedabad followed in the 1860s; the first spinning and weaving mill of Madras began in 1874.

Where did the capital come from? Often from trade with China (opium to China, tea to England). Indian businessmen earned in this trade and turned to industry:

• Dwarkanath Tagore (Bengal) made his fortune in the China trade and set up six joint-stock companies in the 1830s–40s.
• In Bombay, Parsis like Dinshaw Petit and Jamsetjee Nusserwanjee Tata built huge industrial empires from China-trade and raw-cotton wealth.
• Seth Hukumchand, a Marwari, set up the first Indian jute mill in Calcutta in 1917. The family of G.D. Birla also traded with China.
• Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy — son of a Parsi weaver, made money in China trade and shipping.

11. Where did the workers come from? The jobber

Factory workers numbered 584,000 in 1901 and over 2,436,000 by 1946. Most came from the districts around the mills — peasants and artisans with no village work. Over 50 per cent of Bombay cotton workers in 1911 came from Ratnagiri; Kanpur mills drew from nearby villages. Workers moved between village and city, returning home for harvests and festivals.

Getting a job was hard — seekers always outnumbered jobs. Entry was controlled by a jobber: an old, trusted worker who got people from his village, found them jobs, helped them settle, and lent money in crises. Over time the jobber gained power and authority and began demanding money and gifts.

12. The peculiarities of industrial growth & small-scale industries

European Managing Agencies focused on export products (tea/coffee plantations, mining, indigo, jute) — not goods for sale in India. When Indian businessmen set up mills, they avoided competing with Manchester: since yarn (not cloth) was a small part of British imports, early Indian mills produced coarse cotton yarn, used by handloom weavers or exported to China.

Small-scale predominates: large industries were a small part of the economy — about 67 per cent were in Bengal and Bombay (1911). Only 5 per cent (1911) and 10 per cent (1931) of industrial labour worked in registered factories. Strikingly, handloom cloth production expanded, almost trebling between 1900 and 1940.

Why did weavers survive? Technology like the fly shuttle (a mechanical device moved by ropes and pulleys that let weavers operate large looms and weave wide cloth faster) raised productivity. By 1941, over 35 per cent of handlooms had fly shuttles (70–80 per cent in Travancore, Madras, Mysore, Cochin, Bengal). Mills could not imitate specialised weaves — saris with woven borders, Banarasi and Baluchari saris, Madras lungis. Demand for finer cloth (bought by the rich) stayed stable even in famines.

13. The market for goods — advertisements

New products need new consumers. Industrialists used advertisements to make goods appear desirable and necessary, shaping a new consumer culture from the very start of the industrial age.

• Labels: when Manchester sold cloth in India, it put labels on the bundles. The label 'MADE IN MANCHESTER' was a mark of quality. Labels carried beautiful images — of Indian gods and goddesses (Krishna, Saraswati, Lakshmi) to give a kind of divine approval and make foreign goods feel familiar; and of emperors and nawabs to win respect ("if kings use it, the quality cannot be doubted").
• Calendars: by the late nineteenth century, manufacturers printed calendars to popularise products. Unlike newspapers, calendars were seen even by people who could not read — hung in tea shops, homes, offices, seen day after day.
• Nationalist message: when Indian manufacturers advertised, the message was swadeshi — "if you care for the nation, buy products that Indians produce." Ads became a vehicle of the nationalist message.

14. NCERT "Write in brief" — fully answered

Q1. Explain the following:

• (a) Women workers in Britain attacked the Spinning Jenny. The Spinning Jenny let one worker spin many threads at once, sharply reducing the labour needed. Women who survived on hand spinning in the woollen industry feared losing their livelihood, so they attacked the machines. The conflict over the jenny continued for a long time.
• (b) In the seventeenth century merchants from towns in Europe began employing peasants and artisans within villages. World trade and colonies had increased demand, but town merchants could not expand production because powerful guilds controlled it and restricted new entrants. So merchants moved to the countryside, where poor peasants — hit by enclosures and tiny plots — were happy to work for advances while staying on their land.
• (c) The port of Surat declined by the end of the eighteenth century. European companies gained power and won concessions and monopoly rights, shifting trade to the new ports of Bombay and Calcutta carried in European ships. Surat's local merchants lost out, credit dried up, and trade through Surat collapsed from Rs 16 million to Rs 3 million.
• (d) The East India Company appointed gomasthas to supervise weavers in India. To eliminate the existing traders and brokers and gain direct control over weavers, the Company appointed a paid servant, the gomastha, to supervise weavers, collect supplies, and check the quality of cloth — ensuring a regular supply at controlled cost.

Q2. True or False:

• (a) "At the end of the nineteenth century, 80 per cent of the total workforce in Europe was employed in the technologically advanced industrial sector." — False (it was less than 20 per cent).
• (b) "The international market for fine textiles was dominated by India till the eighteenth century." — True.
• (c) "The American Civil War resulted in the reduction of cotton exports from India." — False (it increased India's raw cotton exports to Britain).
• (d) "The introduction of the fly shuttle enabled handloom workers to improve their productivity." — True.

Q3. Explain what is meant by proto-industrialisation. Proto-industrialisation is the early phase of industrialisation (before factories) when there was large-scale production for an international market, but it was not based on factories. Merchants from towns gave advances to peasants and artisans in the countryside, who produced goods at home using family labour. It was a decentralised, merchant-controlled network of production.

15. NCERT "Discuss" — fully answered

Q1. Why did some industrialists in nineteenth-century Europe prefer hand labour over machines? Because (i) labour was abundant and wages were low, so machines were not needed; (ii) demand in many industries was seasonal, so it was cheaper to hire hands for the season than buy idle machines; (iii) the market wanted goods of intricate design and variety (e.g. 500 kinds of hammers, 45 axes) which only human skill could make; and (iv) the upper classes preferred handmade goods as a mark of refinement. Machines were also costly, broke down, and needed heavy investment.

Q2. How did the East India Company procure regular supplies of cotton and silk textiles from Indian weavers? Through a system of control: it appointed gomasthas (paid servants) to supervise weavers, collect cloth and check quality, removing the old traders. It used the system of advances/loans — weavers who took loans had to hand over all their cloth only to the gomastha and could not sell to anyone else. Backed by sepoys and peons, this tied weavers to the Company, ensured regular supply, and eliminated competition.

Q3. Imagine you have been asked to write an article for an encyclopaedia on Britain and the history of cotton. Write your piece. Cotton was the first symbol of Britain's industrial age. Earlier, spinning and weaving were spread across village households under merchants (proto-industrialisation). Raw cotton imports soared from 2.5 million pounds (1760) to 22 million pounds (1787). Inventions in carding, spinning and rolling, and Arkwright's cotton mill, brought all processes under one roof, allowing supervision and quality control. Cotton led the first phase of industrialisation up to the 1840s before iron and steel took over. Cotton goods, especially cheap Manchester cloth, were exported to colonies like India, ruining Indian weavers' markets — making cotton central to both Britain's growth and its colonial economy.

Q4. Why did industrial production in India increase during the First World War? Because British mills were busy with war production, so Manchester imports into India declined and Indian mills suddenly had a vast home market. Indian factories were also called on to supply war needs — jute bags, cloth for army uniforms, tents, leather boots, saddles and more. New factories opened, old ones ran multiple shifts, more workers were employed, and over the war years industrial production boomed.

16. Common confusions

• Proto-industrialisation vs factory system: proto-industrialisation is before factories, in homes/villages, controlled by merchants; the factory system brings all under one roof.
• Stapler / Fuller / Carding: stapler sorts wool; fuller gathers/pleats (fulls) cloth; carding prepares fibres before spinning — don't mix these up.
• Spinning Jenny (Hargreaves, 1764) vs Fly shuttle: the Jenny speeds up spinning (thread); the fly shuttle speeds up weaving (cloth on looms).
• Gomastha vs jobber: the gomastha was a Company servant supervising weavers; the jobber recruited factory workers.
• American Civil War effect: it increased India's raw cotton exports (cut US supply) — it did not reduce them.

17. Quick revision checklist

• Proto-industrialisation = large-scale rural production for export, not in factories; merchants + advances + guilds.
• First factories 1730s; cotton first; Arkwright's mill brings processes under one roof.
• Industrial change was slow — less than 20% workforce in advanced industry; hand labour stayed cheap.
• India: gomastha + system of advances controlled weavers; Manchester cloth ruined exports (33% → 3%).
• Indian mills from 1854 (Bombay); capital from China trade; jobber recruited workers; WWI boom.
• Small-scale & handloom survived (fly shuttle, specialised weaves); ads, labels and calendars built the market.