Describe the beginning of industrialisation in india during the colonial period,citing any two industries as examples.
Answers
ExplanatiThe emergence of modern industry in India is generally associated with the second half of the 19th century when there was a movement of merchant capital into industry. In the late 19th century, an Indian owned complex of modern industry sprang up in western India – the cotton mills of Bombay and Ahmedabad –which was subsequently followed almost half a century later by modern industry between the two world wars. In tracking the history of India’s industrial experience under the colonial dispensation, a number of questions arise. This lesson proposes to address some of these issues around which major debates have also cohered. For example, the impact of British capital and British government policy on the development of Indian industry has been keenly debated. Secondly, there is the question of the nature of Indian business enterprise in the intermediate area of the bazaar that functioned in tandem with and in contradistinction to the world of European dominated business. Thirdly the regional variations in the pattern of Indian industrialization will also be addressed; what was it about western India that enabled it to become a launching pad for capitalist development and what was it about eastern India that it lagged behind, especially in the first stages of industrialization? Fourthly the lesson will also raise the issue of class formation and refer to some of the major issues that have emerged in the historiography of Indian labour. The overall thrust of the lesson will be to examine why the linking of Indian capital to Indian industry came so late and why indeed the Indian economy was unable to affect an industrial revolution. Was it to do with the process of de-industrialization of the 19th century from which India could never recover or was India too backward any way to enjoy the preconditions to industrialization?
Let us begin with a few simple definitions. What do we conventionally mean by industrialization? What are the preconditions that have been connected with this phenomenon in history? What was different or exceptional about India which after all was a colonized country by the end of the 18th century? How did early colonial restrictions undermine commercial society and artisan production? How did this change in the 20th century?
Industrialization is to be understood as a process through which industrial and manufacturing capacity is created and becomes the principal basis of a given economy. Historians have seen industrialization and the industrial revolution as the beginning of the modern period of history, associating the revolution with the maturation of the capitalist mode of production. Traditionally historians have seen England as the first workshop of the world where a series of conditions facilitated the articulation of capitalist enterprise that could rely on a dependable home market and an expanding foreign one. The emergence of capitalist relations in agriculture, the expansion of trade and the development of technology and movement of capital towards industry and innovation meant that England by the end of the 18th century was experiencing the first industrial revolution. The same period saw the emergence of the British colonial regime in India where by the end of the 18th century, a series of developments were beginning to tie the two economies in a relationship of subordination and dependency with serious consequences for the colony. Here we shall merely focus on those sectors that directly affected India’s industrial prospects and thwarted India’s leap to industrialization.
There are generally two types of industrialization, one based on large scale industry that is capable of generating rapid increases in labour productivity, and therefore in average income. It does so by means of capital intensive technology and efficient organization of resources. Small scale industry, the other type, on the other hand tended to be more labor intensive and did not have the potential to generate the same level of employment. In India large scale industrial development occurred, but only in a limited way and the reasons for this were a combination of the impact of colonial policies and the availability of cheap labour and the relative scarcity and costs of capital. To investigate this phenomenon, we need to look more closely at the conditions of industrial production in pre colonial India.
Research on pre colonial India’s commercial and manufacturing economy has demonstrated beyond doubt that the Indian economy accommodated very sophisticated levels of development, in terms of both commercial and monetary organization as well as the state of its manufactures. The range and competitive advantage of Indian export items, especially textiles, the depth and ramifications of India’s credit and banking system and the levels of commercialization in the economy were important factors that could be seen as signs of a proto-industrial phase.
Answer: The Indian economy under the British Rule describes the economy of India during the years of the British Rule, from 1858 to 1947. During this period, according to British economist Angus Maddison, India's share of the world economy collapsed from 24.4% to 4.2% between 1700 and 1950. India experienced deindustrialization.Compared to the Mughal Era, India during the British colonial era had a lower per-capita income, a large decline in the secondary sector, and lower levels of urbanisation. I HOPE THIS HELPS YOU
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