The Age of Industrialisation Summary Class 10 Social Science Chapter 2

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:
  1. The New technology was expensive.
  2. The machines often broke down and repair was costly.
  3. 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

• 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:
  1. The new gomasthas were outsiders, with no long-term social link with the village.
  2. 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:
  1. Their export market collapsed as market overloaded with Manchester imports.
  2. 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.