Question

Why in 19th century Britain self sufficiency in food meant lower living standard and social conflict ?

Answer 1

Historically, fine cottons produced in India were exported to Europe. With industrialisation, British cotton manufacture began to expand, and industrialists pressurised the government to restrict cotton imports and protect local industries

Tariffs were imposed on cloth imports into Britain.Consequently, the inflow of fine Indian cotton began to decline. British manufacturers also began to seek overseas markets for their cloth. Excluded from the British market by tariff barriers, Indian textiles now faced stiff competition in other international markets.While exports of manufactures declined rapidly, export of raw materials increased equally fast. Indigo used for dyeing cloth was another important export for many decades. And, as you have read last year, opium shipments to China grew rapidly from the 1820s to become for a while India’s single largest export. Britain grew opium in India and exported it to China and, with the money earned through this sale, it financed its tea and other imports from China. Over the nineteenth century, British manufactures flooded the Indian market. Food grain and raw material exports from India to Britain and the rest of the world increased. But the value of British exports to India was much higher than the value of British imports from India. Thus Britain had a ‘trade surplus’ with India. Britain used this surplus to balance its trade deficits with other countries – that is, with countries from which Britain was importing more than it was selling to.

This is how a multilateral settlement system works – it allows one country’s deficit with another country to be settled by its surplus with a third country.

Britain’s trade surplus in India also helped pay the so-called ‘home charges’ that included private remittances home by British officials and traders, interest payments on India’s external debt, and pensions of British officials in India.Terms of use© 2018 Learner.in - v1.9.5About Us