why did the indian trade decline in early 19th century?
Answers
India is not an industrial country in the true and modern sense of the term. But by the standards of the 17th and 18th centuries, i.e., before the advent of the Europeans in India, India was the ‘industrial workshop’ of the world.
Further, India’s traditional village economy was characterised by the “blending of agriculture and handicrafts”.
But this internal balance of the village economy had been systematically slaughtered by the British Government. In the process, traditional handicraft industries slipped away, from its pre-eminence and its decline started at the turn of the 18th century and proceeded rapidly almost to the beginning of the 19th century.
This process came to be known as ‘de-industrialisation’—a term opposite to industrialisation. The use of the word ‘de-industrialisation’ could be traced to 1940. Its dictionary meaning is ‘the reduction or destruction of a nation’s industrial capacity’. This term came into prominence in India to describe the ‘process of destruction of Indian handicraft industries by competition from the products of British manufacture during the nineteenth century’.