Age of Industrialisation Chapter Notes - Social Studies (SST) Class 10

Before the Industrial Revolution
• Proto-industrialisation was a phase when there was large-scale industrial production for an international market which was not based on factories.
• Proto-industrial system was part of a network of commercial exchanges.

The Coming Up of the Factory
• By the 1730s, the earliest factories in England came up.
• The first symbol of the new era was cotton.
→ A series of inventions in the eighteenth century increased the efficacy of each step of the production process.
• Richard Arkwright created the cotton mill.

The Pace of Industrial Change
How rapid was the process of industrialisation?
• The most dynamic industries in Britain were clearly cotton and metals.
• The new industries could not easily displace traditional industries.
• Technological changes occurred slowly because:
→ The New technology was expensive.
→ The machines often broke down and repair was costly.
→ They were not as effective as their inventors and manufacturers claimed.

Hand Labour and Steam Power
• In Victorian Britain, there was no shortage of human labour.
• Therefore, industrialists did not want to introduce machines which required large capital investment.
• Many seasonal industries were also there who usually preferred hand labour.
• Handmade goods came to symbolize refinement and class

Life of the Workers
• Labours were available in abundance in the market which affected the lives of workers.
• After the busy season was over, workers became jobless.
• In the early nineteenth century, wages increased but the prices of goods also increased.

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.
• A vibrant sea trade operated through the main pre-colonial ports.

What Happened to Weavers?
• After the East India Company established political power, they tried to eliminate the existing traders and brokers and establish a more direct control over the weaver.
• It appointed a paid servant called the gomastha to supervise weavers, collect supplies, and examine the quality of cloth.
→ Loans were provided for purchasing raw material for production.
→ The produced cloth was to be handed over to the gomastha.
• In many weaving villages there were reports of clashes between weavers and gomasthas because:
→ The new gomasthas were outsiders, with no long-term social link with the village.
→ The price weavers received from the Company was miserably low.

Manchester Comes to India
• As cotton industries developed in England, industrial groups pressurised the government to impose import duties on cotton textiles so that Manchester goods could sell in Britain without competition.
• Also, they persuaded the East India Company to sell British manufactures in Indian markets as well.
• Thus, cotton weavers in India faced two problems at the same time:
→ Their export market collapsed as market overloaded with Manchester imports.
→ Availability of lower cost cotton goods produced by machines.
• By the end of the nineteenth century, factories in India began production, flooding the market with machine-made goods which created a problem of weavers.

Factories Come Up
• In 1854, the first cotton mill in Bombay came up.
• In 1855, first jute mill in Bengal came up.
• By 1862, four cotton mills came up.
• In 1862, another jute mill came up.
• In the 1860s, the Elgin mill was started in Kanpur
• In 1861, the first cotton mill of Ahmadabad was set up.
• In 1874, the first spinning and weaving mill of Madras began production.

The Early Entrepreneurs
• In Bengal, Dwarkanath Tagore made his fortune in the China trade.
• In Bombay, Parsis like Dinshaw Petit and Jamsetjee Nusserwanjee Tata who built huge industrial empires in India.
• After colonial power came in power, Indian businessmen were barred from trading with Europe in manufactured goods.

Where Did the Workers Come From?
• In most industrial regions workers came from the districts around.
• Industrialists usually employed a jobber to get new recruits.
→ He got people from his village, ensured them jobs, helped them settle in the city.

The Peculiarities of Industrial Growth
• European Managing Agencies established tea and coffee plantations, acquiring land at cheap rates from the colonial government.

• By the first decade of the twentieth century, the swadeshi movement promoted Indian industries.
• From 1906, moreover, the export of Indian yarn to China declined since produce from Chinese and Japanese mills flooded the Chinese market.
• During the First World War, British mills busy with war production to meet the needs of the army, Manchester imports into India declined.
• After the war, Manchester could never recapture its old position in the Indian market.

Small-scale Industries Predominate
• Large industries formed only a small segment of the economy and most of them were located in Bengal and Bombay.
• In the twentieth century, handicrafts production and handloom actually expanded.
• By the second decade of the 20th century, weavers used looms with a fly shuttle.

Market for Goods
• New consumers are created is through advertisements.
• Advertisements appear in newspapers, magazines, hoardings, street walls, television screens.
• Advertisements became a vehicle of the nationalist message of Swadeshi.