The Age of Industrialisation
Peculiarities of Indian industry and the market for goods
Explain how Indian industry grew and how goods were sold.
What Europeans and Indians built. European Managing Agencies invested mainly in things for export: tea and coffee plantations (on land got cheaply from the government), mining, indigo and jute. Indian businessmen at first avoided competing with Manchester cloth. Britain sent little yarn to India, so early Indian mills made coarse cotton yarn, not cloth. This yarn went to Indian handloom weavers or was exported to China.
From yarn to cloth. In the early 1900s, things changed:
- the swadeshi movement urged people to boycott foreign cloth;
- industrialists pressed the government for tariff protection;
- from 1906, Chinese and Japanese mills took over the China yarn market.
So Indian industrialists switched from yarn to cloth: cotton piece-goods production doubled between 1900 and 1912.
The First World War: a big push. British mills were busy making things for the army, so Manchester imports fell, and Indian mills suddenly had a huge home market. They also supplied the war: jute bags, uniform cloth, tents, leather boots, saddles. New factories opened; old ones ran extra shifts. After the war, Manchester never regained its place in India: Britain could not compete with the US, Germany and Japan, and Indian industrialists captured the home market.
Small-scale industry still ruled. Big factories grew, but they were a small part of the economy; about 67 per cent of them were in Bengal and Bombay in 1911. In 1911 only 5 per cent of industrial workers were in registered factories; in 1931, 10 per cent. All the others worked in homes and small workshops, hidden in lanes. In fact, handloom cloth production almost trebled between 1900 and 1940. Why?
- New technology: more than 35 per cent of handlooms had a fly shuttle by 1941, which let weavers work faster and weave wider cloth.
- Fine cloth held up: in famines, the poor stopped buying coarse cloth, but the rich still bought Banarasi and Baluchari saris. Mills also could not copy special weaves, like woven-border saris or Madras lungis.
These weavers worked hard, long hours, often the whole family together. They were not leftovers from the past; they were part of industrialisation.
Making people buy: advertising. New products need buyers who want them. Advertising creates that want.
- Manchester labels said 'Made in Manchester' in bold letters, as a mark of quality, and often showed Indian gods and goddesses (Krishna, Saraswati, Lakshmi) to make foreign cloth feel familiar and approved.
- Calendars reached people who could not read too: they hung in tea shops and poor homes as well as offices, so people saw the ad every day of the year.
- Pictures of emperors and nawabs said: if kings use it, it must be good.
- Indian manufacturers' ads carried a nationalist message: if you care for the nation, buy Indian. Ads became a vehicle for swadeshi.
The conclusion. The industrial age brought big technological change, factories and a new workforce. But hand technology and small-scale production remained a big part of it. Look again at those two proud pictures from 1900 and 1901: the real story was more mixed.
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