CBSE Class 10 Social Science Age of Industrialisation Notes Set 05

Before the factory: proto-industrialisation

Industrialisation means producing goods with machines in factories. Before this stage, from the seventeenth century, European merchants could not expand production in towns because urban craft and trade guilds were powerful. They controlled prices, restricted entry of new traders and held monopoly rights. So merchants moved to the countryside, giving raw material to peasants and artisans who worked from their cottages and sold finished goods to the merchants.

This system is called proto-industrialisation. It gave peasant families extra income when farming was not enough, used family labour fully and created close ties between town and country. It was based on hand production, not on factories.

Coming of factories and the pace of change

The first factories in England appeared in the 1730s, and the cotton mill became the symbol of the new age. A series of inventions improved carding, spinning and weaving: the spinning jenny, the flying shuttle, Richard Arkwright's cotton mill and James Watt's improved steam engine. Cotton and iron and steel were the leading industries, but traditional industries still employed many more people and technological change was slow. New machines were expensive and often did not suit buyers.

In Victorian Britain, labour was plentiful, so employers did not always need machines. Many trades had seasonal demand, and the upper classes preferred hand-made goods with intricate designs. For workers, the abundance of labour meant low wages and fear of unemployment. Women in the woollen industry attacked the spinning jenny, which they feared would take their jobs.

Industrialisation in India

Before British rule, Indian textiles were famous and traded through ports like Surat, Masulipatam and Hooghly. As Europeans took control of trade, these ports declined and Bombay and Calcutta rose. The East India Company wanted a steady supply of cloth, so it appointed paid gomasthas to supervise weavers, collect cloth and check quality. It also gave advances so that weavers could not sell to other buyers. Weavers lost bargaining power, were forced to give up small plots of land and often clashed with gomasthas.

From the early nineteenth century, cheap Manchester cloth flooded Indian markets, and raw cotton exports raised prices for Indian weavers. The first cotton mill in Bombay was set up in 1854 and the first jute mill in Bengal in 1855. Entrepreneurs like Dwarkanath Tagore raised money from trade, including the China opium trade. Workers came largely from nearby villages and were recruited by jobbers, trusted old workers who found jobs for new recruits but often demanded money and favours.

The First World War gave a strong push to Indian industry. British mills turned to war production and Manchester imports fell, so Indian factories supplied jute bags, uniforms, tents and boots. Even so, small workshops and handicrafts remained a big part of industry, and the flying shuttle helped handloom weavers raise output.

Markets for goods

Manufacturers used advertisements in newspapers and magazines, labels on cloth showing the mill and place of manufacture, pictures of Indian gods to make foreign goods look familiar, and calendars that even people who could not read could use. These created new consumers.

Worked examples

1. Why did merchants turn to the countryside? Town guilds were strong and restricted entry, so merchants could expand output only by employing rural families who had spare time.

2. Who was a jobber and what did he do? He was a trusted old worker who brought in recruits from his village, helped them settle in the city and gave them money in a crisis.

3. How did the First World War help Indian industry? Imports from Britain fell as its mills made war goods, and Indian factories got orders for military supplies.

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