The Age of Industrialisation Class 10 Notes Social Science History Chapter 5
Dawn of The Century
In 1900, E.T. Pauli produced a music book that had a picture on the cover page announcing the ‘Dawn of the Century’. The picture featured new machines and technology as symbols of progress in the background.
Multiple other art forms, pictures like “Two Magicians”, showcased wide differences between two parts of the world- Orient (the east) and Occident (the west). This picture featured Aladdin, a fictional character as the symbol of the east and a mechanic as a symbol of the West.
It showcased that the eastern world was still indulged in rhetoric and fiction while the Western world was progressive and technology oriented.
These images offered us a triumphant account of the modern world.
The modern world is associated with rapid technological change and innovations, machines and factories, railways and steamships. The history of industrialisation thus became a story of development, and the modern age appeared as a wonderful time of technological progress.
Example 1.
Give two examples where modem development that is associated with progress has led to problems. You may like to think of areas related to environmental issues, nuclear weapons or disease.
Answer:
The invention of various technologies like television, electrical appliances like computers, mobile phones has reduced the physical activity of people and caused obesity and various other diseases among all age groups.
Invention of atomic and nuclear power/reactors had led to greatest tragedies like the Bhopal Gas Tragedy and Hiroshima, Nagasaki disaster and many more.
Before The Industrial Revolution
Most people believe that industrialisation began with the establishment of factories. Factories marked the beginning of the age of industrialisation However, evidence points to various processes, wf ch can be considered related to industrialisation, being carried out even when there were no factories.
Example 2.
Explain what is meant by proto-industrialisation.
Answer:
Industrialisation has been associated with the growth of the factory industry to the extent that the history of industrialisation begins with the setting up of the first factories. However, there was large-scale industrial production for an international market even when factories had not been set-up. This phase of industrialisation was called proto-industrialisation.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, merchants migrated to the countryside to Lure them to produce for the international market. Demand for goods boomed due to expansion in world trade and the acquisition of colonies. However, the supply production could not be boosted within towns due to the presence of powerful urban crafts and trade guilds.
- Trade guilds comprised producers who trained craftspeople, monitored production, regulated competition and prices, and restricted the entry of new people into the trade.
- They were granted a monopoly to produce and trade in specific products. New merchants could not set up business in towns easily and had to turn to the countryside.
- Poor peasants and artisans were dependent on common lands for food and livelihood. They had to look for alternate opportunities as open fields were disappearing and commons were being enclosed. They began working for merchants because they provided them with advance payments.
- Income from proto-industrial production supplemented their shrinking income from cultivation.
- A close relationship developed between the town and the countryside. Merchants were based in towns but the work was done mostly in the countryside.
- The proto-industrial system was a part of a network of commercial exchanges where each step was carried out at a different location altogether.
The goods were produced by a vast number of producers working within their family farms.
Frequently Asked:
London came to be known as a finishing centre because maximum goods, especially textiles were produced, spun and then finished in London before being exported to international markets.
The Coming Up of the Factories:
Factories were first set up in England by the 1730s. The first symbol of the new era was cotton. Its production boomed in the late nineteenth century due to a number of changes within the process of production. Multiple inventions in the eighteenth century increased the efficacy of each step of the production process (carding, twisting, spinning, and rolling). They enhanced the output per worker and made the production of stronger threads and yarn possible.
Frequently Asked:
Richard Arkwright invented the cotton mill.
The cloth production which was otherwise spread all around the countryside could now be limited to the mill. The mill enabled all the processes to be carried out under one roof and management. It made possible stricter regulation over productivity of workers and control over the quality of the product.
Factories attracted the attention of the producers during the nineteenth century because they were unique and provided multiple facilities. Merchants forgot the older centres of production- the bylanes and the workshops.
The Pace of Industrial Change:
In late eighteenth-century Britain, cotton and metal industries were the most dynamic. Cotton was the leading sector in the first phase of industrialisation up to the 1840s. Later, the iron and steel industry became popular.
With the expansion of railways, in England from the 1840s and in the colonies from the 1860s, the demand for iron and steel increased rapidly. The new industries could not easily displace traditional industries. Only a limited workforce was employed in these industries.
A great portion of the output was still produced within domestic units.
The traditional industries became technologically advanced too but the process was slow. 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.
New technology was expensive and merchants and industrialists were cautious about using it and hence the technological advancement was very slow. Cost of maintenance was very high and the machines broke down frequently.
James Watt improved the steam engine produced by Newcomen and patented the new engine in 1781.
The new model was manufactured by Mathew Boulton. Even though it was a most powerful new technology that enhanced the productivity of the labour manifold, it was slow to be accepted by industrialists. Most people in the mid-nineteenth century were labourers and traditional craftspersons and not machine operators.
Hand Labour and Steam Power
There was no shortage of human labour in Victorian Britain. A large number of poor peasants and vagrants migrated to cities in search of livelihood. Since labourers were available in abundance, wages were low. On the other hand, machines were expensive, thus the industrialists did not want to increase their capital investment. The demand for labour was seasonal in most industries. Flence the industrialists usually preferred hand labour and employing workers for the season. Machines were oriented to producing uniforms, standardised goods for a mass market, but only handmade goods were refined with specific shapes and intricate.
In mid-nineteenth-century Britain, for instance, hammers and axes were produced. These required human skill.
Important
In Victorian Britain, the upper classes – the aristocrats and the bourgeoisie – preferred handmade goods. Such products came to symbolise refinement and class due to their intricate details. They were better finished, individually produced, and carefully designed. Machine-made goods were produced for exports to the colonies. In nineteenth- century America, which had severe shortage of labour, installed machines to produce goods. This was not the case in labour-abundant countries, like Britain.
Life of the Workers
Jobs were easily available to people with greater social connections in the cities and factories. But other workers had to wait for a long time in dire situations. Some workers stayed in night refuges that were set up by private individuals; others went to the casual wards maintained by the Poor Law authorities. Seasonality of work meant prolonged periods without work for many workers. Some workers were terminated without warning after the busy season was over.
Wages increased somewhat in the early nineteenth century. However during periods of inflation, these wages did not support the workers well. For example, during the Napoleonic wars, prices rose exponentially and workers faced dire economic situations.
The number of days of work which determined the average daily income of the workers were irregular. In periods of economic slump, like the 1830s, unemployment rates went up to anything between 35 and 75 per cent in different regions. The introduction of new technology brought about the fear of unemployment among the people. Women who were making handmade garments attacked the newly introduced spinning jenny machines when they were introduced in the woollen industries.
Frequently Asked
Spinning Jenny was devised by James Hargreaves in 1764. It speeded up the spinning process and reduced labour demand.
After the 1840s, building activity intensified in the cities, roads were widened, new railway stations came up, railway lines were extended, tunnels were dug, drainage and sewers laid, rivers embanked and this helped to widen opportunities for employment. In the 1840s the number of people working in the transport industries doubled and doubled again in the next 30 years.
Industrialisation in The Colonies
The pattern of industrialization was completely different among the colonies which were controlled and inhabited by developed nations. Britain was the first industrialised nation and the pattern of its industrialisation was organic. India, a colonialised country at that point industrialised according to how the British deemed it fit.
The Age of Indian Textiles
Before the age of machine industries, silk and cotton goods from India dominated the international market, Indian variety was fine. Coarser cotton came from other countries.
Armenian and Persian merchants traded with merchants from Punjab to Afghanistan, eastern Persia and Central Asia. Trade was carried through mountain passes, across deserts and sea. Sea trade was carried through main pre-colonial ports such as Surat on the Gujarat coast connected India to the Gulf and Red Sea Ports; Masulipatam on the Coromandel coast and Hooghly in Bengal had trade links with Southeast Asian ports.
Indian merchants and bankers financed production and carried goods and supplied exporters. Supply
merchants linked the port towns to the inland regions, gave advances to weavers, procured the woven cloth from weaving villages, and carried the supply to the ports. Big shippers and export merchants had brokers at the ports to negotiate the price and buy goods from the supply merchants operating inland. This network broke down by the 1750s.
The European secured concessions and monopoly rights to trade from local courts. Old ports began declining.
Credit dried up and local bankers became bankrupt. Value of trade fell heavily. As old ports like Surat arid Hooghly declined in significance, Bombay and Calcutta grew. With growth in colonial power, trade was controlled by European companies.
Old trading houses collapsed, those who wanted to still operate, operated within a network shaped by European trading companies.
What Happened to Weavers?
The consolidation of East India Company power did not result in a decline in textile exports from India initially. Indian fine textiles were in great demand in Europe before the British industries showed up.
Before establishing political power in Bengal and Carnatic in the 1760s and 1770s, the East India Company had found it difficult to ensure a regular supply of goods for export. The French, Dutch, Portuguese traders along with local traders competed in the market to secure woven cloth. Weavers and supply merchants could bargain and sell the produce to the best buyer. Prices were very high. After asserting a monopoly right to trade, East India Company eliminated competition, controlled costs, and ensured regular supplies of cotton and silk goods.
The Company tried to eliminate the middlemen and establish a more direct control over the weaver.
Example 3.
How did the East India Company procure regular supplies of cotton and silk textiles from Indian weavers?
Answer:
- Paid servants called gomasthas were employed to supervise weavers, collect supplies, and examine the quality of cloth.
- Company weavers were prevented from dealing with other buyers- some through the system of advances. The system tied the weaver to the buyer who placed an order and gave him the advance.
- Gomasthas and weavers clashed because these supply merchants were outsiders and they had no sensitivity or long-term social link with the village, unlike the early supply merchants who developed and maintained close relationships with weavers.
- The new Gomasthas were arrogant and brutal. They flogged weavers if the supply was delayed. Weavers were forced to sell at low prices (already decided by the British traders). The loans tied them to the company and their freedom as producers had completely vanished.
Loans received by the weavers helped to cultivate the fields maintained on the side by them. But due to the high demand, the entire family with children and women, all were required to contribute. Hence the fields had to be sold or abandoned.
Weavers revolted, mass migrated to other villages to save themselves from debts and set up looms. At some places, weavers along with the village traders revolted, opposing the Company and its officials. Weavers gave up weaving and turned to agricultural labour.
The nineteenth-century brought with it new problems for the weavers.
Manchester Comes to India:
Irrespective of the fine quality of goods produced by Indian producers, by the beginning of the nineteenth-century exports from India began declining.
As cotton industries developed in England, industrial groups pressurised the British government to impose import duties on cotton textiles. This was to boost the trade of Manchester goods in Britain against competition from foreign goods. They forced the East India Company to sell British manufactures in Indian markets. Hence, Indian exports to Britain reduced drastically while imports multiplied. The export market collapsed and the local markets shrank due to imports from Manchester creating double problems for cotton weavers. Imports were cheap due to mass mechanic production and indigenous products could not compete with them.
Weavers also could not get a sufficient supply of raw cotton of good quality. As American Civil War broke out, cotton supplies from the US were cut off and Britain had to turn to India. Exports of raw cotton increased and prices shot up.
Weavers in India were forced to buy raw cotton at exorbitant prices. Factories in India began production, flooding the market with machine goods. The weaving industries could not sustain this.
Factories Come Up
The first cotton mill in Bombay came up in 1854. Jute mills first came up in Bengal in 1855. In north India, the Elgin Mill was started in Kanpur in the 1860s. The first cotton mill of Ahmedabad was set up in 1861. First spinning and weaving mill of Madras began production in 1874.
The Early Entrepreneurs
- Industries were set up in different regions by varying sorts of people. From the late eighteenth century, the British in India began exporting opium to China and tea from China to England.
- Indian industrialists began providing finance, procuring supplies, and shipping consignments. They had a vision of developing industrial enterprises in India.
- Dwarka Nath Tagore indulged in trade in China and set up six joint-stock companies in the 1830s and 1840s. His businesses failed but other Chinese industrialists progressed.
- In Bombay. Parsis like Dinshaw Petit and Jamsetjee Nusserwanjee Tata earned through exports to China, and from raw cotton shipments to England.
- Seth Hukumchand was another such industrialist along with the family of GD Birla.
- Capital was accumulated through other trade networks. Merchants from Madras traded with Burma, others traded in the Middle East and East Africa.
Other commercial groups were not directly involved in external trade. They carried goods from one place to another, banking money, transferring funds between cities, and financing traders. They set up factories as well. Due to the colonial control over Indian trade, they could not function as freely as before.
They were barred from trading with Europe in manufactured goods. They were forced to export mostly raw materials and food grains on British demand. They were thrown out of the shipping business too.
Important
Till the First World War, European Managing Agencies like Bird Heiglers & Co., Andrew Yule, and Jardine Skinner & Co. controlled a large sector of Indian industries. Indian financiers provided the capital. European Agencies made all investment and business-related decisions. European agencies mainly controlled the market. These agencies mobilised capital, set up joint-stock companies and managed them. Indian businessmen were prohibited from entering into European merchant- industrialists groups.
Example 4.
Source Based:
Read the source given below and answer the questions that follow:
Industries were set up in different regions by varying sorts of people. Let us see who they were. The history of many business groups goes back to trade with China. From the late eighteenth century, as you have read in your book last year, the British in India began exporting opium to China and took tea from China to England. Many Indians became junior players in this trade, providing finance, procuring supplies, and shipping consignments. Having earned through trade, some of these businessmen had visions of developing industrial enterprises in India. In Bengal, Dwarkanath Tagore made his fortune in the China trade before he turned to industrial investment, setting up six joint-stock companies in the 1830s and 1840s.
(A) Which of the following was not an early industrialist?
(a) GD Birla
(b) Dwarkanath Tagore
(c) Dinshaw Petit
(d) Seth Hukumchand
Answer:
(a) GD Birla
Explanation: GD Birla’s grandfather was one of the earliest entrepreneurs of India.
(B) Who set up the first Indian jute mill in Calcutta in 1917?
(a) GD Birla
(b) Dwarkanath Tagore
(c) Dinshaw Petit
(d) Seth Hukumchand
Answer:
(d) Seth Hukumchand
(C) Name one item exported by British India to China.
Answer:
Opium
(D) Assertion (A): As colonial control over Indian trade tightened, the space within which Indian merchants could function became increasingly limited.
Reason(R): They were barred from trading with Europe in manufactured goods.
Options:
(a) Both (A) and (R) are true and (R) is the correct explanation of (A).
(b) Both (A) and (R) are true but (R) is not the correct explanation of (A).
(c) (A) is correct but (R) is wrong.
(d) (A) is wrong but (R) is correct.
Answer:
(a) Both (A) and (R) are true and (R) is the correct explanation of (A)
Frequently Asked
In 1912, J.N. Tata set up the first iron and steel works in India at Jamshedpur.
Where did the workers come from?
With the expansion of factories, the demand of workers increased. Workers were being recruited. Those peasants and artisans who were out of work, went to the industrial centres in search of work. Millworkers moved between the village and the city, returning to their village homes during harvests and festivals. Workers travelled great distances in the hope of work in the mills. Getting jobs was always difficult despite multiplication of mills and increase in the demand for workers. Job opportunities were always lesser than the number of applicants. Entry into the mills was also restricted.
Important
A jobber was employed to recruit new employees.
Jobbers employed their relatives and acquaintances and gained popularity and power due to this. He controlled the lives of the poor and obtained favours from people looking for jobs. Factory workers increased with time but were a small portion of the entire industrial force.
The Peculiarities of Industrial Growth
European Managing Agencies favoured certain kinds of products. They established tea and coffee plantations, acquiring land at cheap rates from the colonial government; and they invested in mining, indigo and jute. These products were cultivated for export purposes.
Indian businessmen avoided competing with Manchester goods in the Indian market. Early cotton mills in India produced coarse cotton yarn (thread) and the imported yarn was of superior variety.
The yarn produced in Indian spinning mills was used by handloom weavers in India or exported to China. By the first decade of the twentieth century a series of changes affected the pattern of industrialisation.
The Swadeshi movement gathered momentum and people boycotted foreign cloth.
Industrial groups forced the government to increase tariff protection and grant other concessions to protect their collective interests. Moreover, the export of Indian yarn to China declined since produce from Chinese and Japanese mills flooded the Chinese market. Industrialists shifted their focus to cloth production. Cotton piece goods production in India doubled between 1900 and 1912.
Example 5.
Why did industrial production in India increase during the First World War? [NCERT] Ans. (1) Industrial growth was slow till the First World War. As the war began, British mills became busy to fulfill the needs created because of the war, Manchester imports into India declined drastically.
(2) This gave Indian weavers a huge gap in the native market to cover.
(3) Indian factories also had to multiply their supply to fulfill war needs.
Thus, industrial production boomed.
Post First World War, Manchester could never recapture its old position in the Indian market again. As a result, the economy of Britain crumbled. Cotton production collapsed and exports of cotton cloth from Britain fell dramatically. Native Indian industrialists consolidated their position and captured the markets again.
Frequently Asked
Indian merchants in different regions formed Chambers of Commerce to regulate business and decide on issues of coilective concern. Madras Chamber of Commerce was one such chamber too.
Small-scale Industries Predominate
Large industries formed only a small segment of the economy while factory industries grew steadily. Most factories were located in Bengal and Bombay.
Small-scale production dominated the rest of the country. Only a small proportion of the total industrial labour force worked in registered factories, others worked in unregistered shops and small factories.
Important
Handicrafts production and handloom sector expanded in the twentieth century. Despite the cheap machine-made thread driving weavers out of their jobs, they survived. Majority of the workers were not machine operators but traditional craftspersons and labourers.
Workers adopted new technologies like fly shuttles to boost their production. This increased productivity per worker, speeded up production and reduced labour demand. *-» Banarasi, Baluchari sarees and sarees with intricate and detailed work could not be produced by machines and mills could not imitate specialised weaves.
Some weavers produced coarse cloth while others wove finer varieties. Demand of coarser clothes fluctuated heavily.
Coarser clothes were bought by poorer classes. They could not buy clothes during famines and bad harvest seasons. Most of the time they were unable to even earn enough money to eat. The demand for the finer varieties was stable since they were bought by the rich who could buy clothes despite the economic depression.
Weavers and other craftspeople lived hard lives. Their families had to work at various stages of the production process. Their life and labour was integral to the process of industrialisation.
Market For Goods
British manufacturers attempted to take over the Indian market and were assisted by advertisements in persuading the consumers.
- Advertisements make products appear presentable and essential.
- Advertisements appear in newspapers, magazines, hoardings, street walls, television screens.
- Advertisements have played an essential role in expanding the markets for products and in shaping a new consumer culture from the beginning of industrialisation.
Manchester industrialists put labels on the cloth bundles to make the place of manufacture and the name of the company familiar to the buyer and also as a mark of quality. Labels were also made to carry pictures to persuade and impress the consumers.
Images of Indian gods and goddesses regularly appeared on these labels to make the consumers feel familiar with the producer. Manufacturers printed calendars to popularise their products since they were used by a wider consumer base from every class and section of the society.
Figures of important personages, of emperors and nawabs were also used on advertisements and calendars as quality assurance.
Advertisements also became carriers of the nationalist message of swadeshi.
Images of numerous Indian gods and goddesses – Karrika, Lakshmi. Saroswati and historical flgures like the image of Maharaja Ranjit Singh – were printed on cloth labels approving the quatity of the product being marketed.
The age of industrialisation experienced major technological changes, growth of factories, and the making of a new industrial Labour force. Despite that, hand Labour and small-scale industries were still operating and producing goods. The age of industriaLisation was seen as one of the most golden periods because of the amount of development it brought along with it. Hand Labour and other small industries however operated because of abundant labour.
Industrialists took their own time in adopting the new technology.
→ Orient: refers to the countries on the east of the Mediterranean Sea.
→ Occident: refers to the countries on the west of the Mediterranean Sea.
→ Consumer: One who consumes or uses a product
→ Carding, twisting, spinning, and rolling: Stages of production of yarn and thread.
→ Fly shuttle: A mechanical device used for weaving, moved by means of ropes and pulleys.
→ Waterfront: A part of a town that borders the sea or a lake or river:
→ E.T. Pauli: Music producer who produced an album with the image, “Dawn of the century” on the top.
→ James Watt: A Scottish inventor, mechanical engineer, and chemist who improved on Thomas Newcomen’s 1712 steam engine, patented that and made it fundamental to the changes brought by the Industrial Revolution
→ Newcomen: An English inventor who created the atmospheric engine, the first practical fuel-burning engine in 1712.
→ Richard Arkwright: An English inventor and a leading entrepreneur during the early Industrial Revolution who created the cotton mill.
→ James Hargreaves: devised spinning jenny.
→ Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy: He was a Parsi weaver and was involved in trade with China and shipping.
→ Dinshaw Petit: He was a Parsi entrepreneur and founder of the first textile mills in India. He was the grandfather of Rattanbai Petit, who was the wife of the founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah.
→ Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata: He was an Indian pioneer industrialist, who founded the Tata Group, India’s biggest conglomerate company. He established an iron and steel plant in Jamshedpur.
→ Dwarkanath Tagore: The first Indian industrialists to form an enterprise with British partners. He was the grandfather of Rabindranath Tagore. He invested in shipping, shipbuilding, mining, banking, plantations and insurance.
→ G.D. Birla: Ghanshyam Das Birla was a pioneering Indian businessman and member of the Birla Family.
→ 1730: Earliest factories come up in England.
→ 1764: Spinning Jenny was devised by James Hargreaves
→ 1781: James Watt patented the new steam engine.
→ 1854: First cotton mill in Bombay comes up
→ 1855: First Jute mill comes up in Bengal
→ The 1860s: Elgin Mill was started in Kanpur
→ 1863: London underground railways began operating
→ 1874: The first spinning and weaving mill of Madras began production.
→ 1900: Dawn of the Century was published by E.T. Pauli Music Co.
→ 1912: First Iron and steel plant set up in Jamshedpur
→ 1917: Seth Hukumchand- set up the first Indian jute mill in Calcutta