The Britishers encouraged de-industrialisation in India. Justify this statement.
Answers
Explanation:
Terms in this set (7)
Six Causes of Industrialization. Natural Resources. ...
Natural Resources. Abundance of Forests: Cheap resource for building material. ...
Growing Population. Population growth will cause an increase of demand. ...
Improved Transportation. ...
High Immigration. ...
New Inventions. ...
Investment Capital.
Answer:
Industry that had experienced the onslaught of de-industrialisation most was the cotton textile industry. It was the largest provider of employment after agriculture. India’s cotton goods were the best in the world before 1800.
Machine- made textile goods of Britain, however, did the great damage to this Indian industry since 1750. Consequent upon industrial revolution in cotton textile industry there had been massive growth of British imports in India and the domination of British cloth in the Indian market did the havoc; it created large scale unemployment as well as unbelievable drop in wages among the spinners and weavers. Other affected industries were: jute handloom weaving of Bengal, woolen manufactures of Kashmir, silk manufacture of Bengal, hand-paper industry, glass industry, lac, bangles, etc.
Britain experienced ‘industrialisation’ in the mid-18th century and India experienced ‘de-industrialisation’ at the same time. The process of de-industrialisation of India began with the gradual disappearance of cotton manufactures from the list of India’s exports and the remarkable growth of cotton manufactures in the list of her imports mainly from Britain.
That is why it is said that Britain “inundated the very mother country of cotton with cottons”, thereby eclipsing India’s traditional handicraft industries. Now we will trace out the causes that brought about the catastrophic decline of these industries.
D. R. Gadgil attributed the decline in handicrafts to three causes.
These were:
(i) Disappearance of the court culture of late Moghul days and old aristocracy,
(ii) The establishment of an alien rule with the influx of many foreign influences that such a change in the nature of government meant, and
(iii) The competition from machine-made goods.
(i) Disappearance of court culture:
The main source or rather the entire source of demand for the products of these handicrafts came from the royal courts, and the urban aristocrats. With the abolition of the royal court, one source of demand for the products of these crafts dried up. However, this had been to some extent counterbalanced by the class of nobles and urban aristocrats who patronized the arts and the handicrafts.
But with the gradual extension of the British rule and the decline in royal power all over India, craftsmen gradually pulled down the shutters of their karkhanas. But there is no reason to suppose that the cotton industry as a whole sustained permanent injury on account of shrinkage in demand for Dacca fabric or muslins in the indigenous courts. So, let us enquire the second cause as suggested by Gadgil.