how did the industrial revolution impact the Indian textiles
Answers
The industrial revolution came late to India, due to its complicated political and economic relationship with Great Britain.
Although India, which was a British colony, dominated the global cotton textile markets in the 18th century, the Indian textile industry took a hit when the industrial revolution began in Great Britain.
The use of steam power in British mills reduced the cost of British cotton by 85 percent, making its textile goods internationally competitive for the first time. Britain quickly became a leading world exporter of textiles, displacing India in the process.
In addition, in order to protect its new textile industry, Great Britain began to restrict textile imports from India and other countries by establishing tariffs and other protective policies. Great Britain instead began to export its own textiles to India.
This halted any plans Great Britain may have had to develop India’s textile industry and instead led to India’s deindustrialization, with British lawmakers pushing the country to become more agrarian than industrial.
New colonial laws forced Indian farmers to devote most of their fields to cotton crops, instead of food, which led to widespread famine and poverty in India.
Therefore, the industrial revolution reversed India’s economic relationship with Great Britain so that it was now merely a supplier of raw materials for Great Britain and an importer of British textiles, instead of a producer of textile goods.
As a result, it took decades before India started adopting modern industrial practices, such as steam power and mechanized spinning and weaving, in its textile manufacturing.
The industrial revolution finally came to India in 1854, when the first steam-powered cotton mill in Asia opened in Bombay. Growth was slow though and the expansion of these modernized cotton mills didn’t pick up until the 1870s and 80s