Impact of Industrial Revolution in India

Impact of Industrial Revolution in India

Until the middle of eighteenth century, England was an agricultural country and India was known for its excellence in manufactures as well as in agriculture. In the first quarter of eighteenth century, in the context of Indian cotton manufactures flooding in England, a law was enacted prohibiting the use of Indian calicoes and silks. The invention of flying shuttle by John Kay and the inventions of Hargreaves, Arkwright and Crompton within thirty years accelerated the process of spinning and weaving. When the British established their foothold in Bengal as a territorial power, the loot from Bengal and the Carnatic provided the required capital and helped accomplish Industrial Revolution in England. The weavers of Bengal suffered at the hands of the Company’s officials and their agents, who first insisted on payment of a transit duty for the commodities they carried from one place to another and later for cultivation of commercial crops required for British industries in England. The English deliberately destroyed Indian industry by dumping the Indian markets with their machine-made cheap cotton piece goods. Because of loss of market for hand-woven cotton goods, India lost her old industrial position and became an exporter of raw material.

By the first quarter of nineteenth century the export of  Dacca  muslin to England stopped. Even the export of raw cotton from India had steadily dwindled owing to the competition from USA. Weavers who were eking out an independent livelihood were thrown out of employment because of flooding of British factory-made cheap cotton fabrics in Indian markets.

The Collector of Madurai reported that families of about 5000 weavers did not have the means to take more than one meal of rice a day. The Collector of Tirunelveli observed that the weaving population has ‘outrun its means of subsistence and trammels of caste prevent them from taking to other work.’ Millions died of starvation in famines. To escape starvation deaths, peasants and artisans had to move out of the country opting to working on plantations in British Empire colonies as indentured (penal contract) labourers under wretched service and living conditions.