why did the peasants become poorer and artists and soldiers unemployed due to British economic policies
Answers
The economic policies followed by the British led to the rapid transformation of India’s economy into a colonial economy whose nature and structure were determined by the needs of the British economy. In this respect the British conquest of India differed from all previous foreign conquests.
The previous conquerors had overthrown Indian political powers, but had made no basic changes in the country’s economic structure; they had gradually become a part of Indian life, political as well as economic. The peasant, the artisan and the trader had continued to lead the same type of existence as before.
The basic economic pattern that of the self-sufficient rural economy, had been perpetuated. Change of rulers had merely meant change in the personnel of those who appropriated the peasant’s surplus. But the British conquerors were entirely different. They totally disrupted the traditional structure of the Indian economy.
Moreover, they never became an integral part of Indian life. They always remained foreigners in the land, exploiting Indian resources and carrying away India’s wealth as tribute. The results of this subordination of the Indian economy to the interests of British trade and industry were many and varied.
2. Ruin of Artisans and Craftsmen:
There was a sudden and quick collapse of the urban handicrafts industry which had for centuries made India’s name a byword in the markets of the entire civilized world. This collapse was caused largely by competition with the cheaper imported machine made goods from Britain.
We know the British imposed a policy of one way free trade on India after 1813 and the invasion of British manufactures, in particular cotton textiles, immediately followed. Indian goods made with primitive techniques could not compete with goods produced on a mass scale by powerful steam-operated machines.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
The ruin of Indian industries, particularly rural artisan industries, proceeded even more rapidly once the railways were built. The railways enabled British manufactures to reach and uproot the traditional industries in the remotest villages of the country. As the American writer, D.H. Buchanan, has put it, “The armour of the isolated self-sufficient village was pierced by the steel rail, and its life blood ebbed away.”
The cotton-weaving and spinning industries were the worst hit. Silk and woolen textiles fared no better and a similar fate overtook the iron, pottery, glass, paper, metals, guns, shipping, oil-pressing, tanning and dyeing industries.
Apart from the influx of foreign goods, some other factors arising from British conquest also contributed to the ruin of Indian industries. The oppression practiced by the East India Company and its servants on the craftsmen of Bengal during the second half of the eighteenth century, forcing them to sell their goods below the market price and to hire their services below the prevailing wage, compelled a large number of them to abandon their ancestral professions. In the normal course, Indian handicrafts would have benefited from the encouragement given by the Company to their export, but this oppression had an opposite effect.
The high import duties and other restrictions imposed on the import of Indian goods into Britain and Europe during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, combined with the development of modern manufacturing industries in Britain led to the virtual closing of European markets to Indian manufacturers after 1820.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
The gradual disappearance of Indian rulers and their courts who were the main customers of the handicrafts produced also gave a big blow to these industries. “For instance, the Indian states were completely dependent on the British in the production of military weapons.”
The British purchased all their military and other government stores in Britain. Moreover, Indian rulers and nobles were replaced as the ruling class by British officials and military officers who patronized their own home-products almost exclusively. This increased the cost of handicrafts and reduced their capacity to compete with foreign goods.
On seeing popularity of Indian paintings.Britishers made new laws which made artists unemployed.
Soldiers were not given sufficient wages and they were sent first at the places of fighting.This worsen soldiers position.