In 1811-12, textiles made up a third of India’s exports. By 1850, that figure had collapsed to just 3%.
This article covers how colonial rule dismantled India’s textile trade, and how factories and Indian entrepreneurs later rose in its place.
🏛️ Must Know
The Age of Indian Textiles, Before Colonial Control
- Global Demand Before machine industry existed, Indian silk and cotton goods dominated the international textile market, prized for their fine quality.(NCERT 10)
- Overland and Sea Routes Fine textiles travelled by camel through Central Asia, and by sea from ports like Surat, Masulipatam, and Hoogly.(NCERT 10)
- Indian-Controlled Trade A network of Indian merchants and bankers financed production, procured cloth, and negotiated export prices, until this broke down by the 1750s.(NCERT 10)
- Surat’s Collapse Surat’s trade value fell from Rs 16 million in the late 1600s to just Rs 3 million by the 1740s, as Bombay and Calcutta rose instead.(NCERT 10)
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The Gomastha System: Controlling the Weaver
- A Paid Supervisor After gaining political power in Bengal, the East India Company appointed a gomastha to supervise weavers and collect cloth directly.(NCERT 10)
- Advances Meant Control Weavers who took loans to buy raw material had to hand their cloth only to the gomastha, losing the freedom to sell elsewhere.(NCERT 10)
- Outsiders, Not Neighbours Unlike earlier supply merchants who lived among weavers, gomasthas were outsiders who marched into villages with sepoys and punished delays harshly.(NCERT 10)
- Weavers Resisted Many weavers deserted their villages, migrated elsewhere, or gave up weaving entirely for agricultural labour rather than accept these terms.(NCERT 10)
Manchester Comes to India
- A Two-Sided Collapse Cotton weavers faced both a collapsing export market and a local market flooded with cheap Manchester imports.(NCERT 10)
- The Numbers Cotton piece-goods were 33% of India’s exports in 1811-12, but had fallen to just 3% by 1850-51.(NCERT 10)
- Reversed Imports By the 1870s, cotton piece-goods made up over 50% of India’s imports, having been virtually nonexistent a century earlier.(NCERT 10)
- A Cotton Squeeze When the American Civil War cut off US cotton supplies, Britain turned to India, driving raw cotton prices too high for Indian weavers to afford.(NCERT 10)
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Factories Come Up: The Early Entrepreneurs
- First Mills Bombay’s first cotton mill opened in 1854, followed by jute mills in Bengal from 1855, and mills in Kanpur, Ahmedabad, and Madras soon after.(NCERT 10)
- Fortunes from China Trade Many early Indian industrialists, including Dwarkanath Tagore and Parsi businessmen like Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy, first earned capital through trade with China.(NCERT 10)
- Tata’s Steel Works In 1912, J.N. Tata set up India’s first iron and steel works at Jamshedpur, decades after textile mills had already begun.(NCERT 10)
- European Managing Agencies Firms like Bird Heiglers, Andrew Yule, and Jardine Skinner controlled much of Indian industry until the First World War, often using Indian-supplied capital.(NCERT 10)
Where the Workers Came From: The Jobber System
- Rapid Growth India’s factory workforce grew from 584,000 in 1901 to over 2,436,000 by 1946.(NCERT 10)
- Local Recruitment Most workers came from nearby districts, such as Ratnagiri for Bombay’s mills, often returning home for harvests and festivals.(NCERT 10)
- The Jobber’s Power Industrialists relied on a trusted old worker, the jobber, to recruit new hands from his own village, who then demanded money and favours in return.(NCERT 10)
Exam Point of View
Small-Scale Industry Survives and Expands
- Factories Stayed Small Only 5% of India’s industrial workforce worked in registered factories in 1911, rising to just 10% by 1931.(NCERT 10)
- Handloom Cloth Grew Despite mill competition, handloom cloth production nearly trebled between 1900 and 1940, helped by the fly shuttle’s spread.(NCERT 10)
- Fine Cloth Survived Best Coarse cloth demand collapsed during famines, but finer weaves like Banarasi and Baluchari saris, bought by the wealthy, stayed stable.(NCERT 10)
Creating a Market: Advertising and Swadeshi
- Made in Manchester British cloth labels used bold “MADE IN MANCHESTER” text alongside images of Indian gods to build buyer trust.(NCERT 10)
- Calendars as Advertising Manufacturers printed calendars, useful even to non-readers, hung everywhere from tea shops to middle-class homes, keeping the brand visible all year.(NCERT 10)
- The Swadeshi Push Indian manufacturers turned advertising nationalist, urging buyers to choose Indian-made cloth as a mark of loyalty to the nation.(NCERT 10)
The Trap Examiners Set on India’s Industrialisation
- Why Students often assume Indian textile decline began with factory competition. It actually began decades earlier, from gomastha control and Manchester imports.
- Instead “Deindustrialisation” is sometimes treated as uniform decline. Coarse-cloth weavers suffered badly, but fine-weave specialists and handloom users of the fly shuttle often adapted and survived.
- Takeaway The First World War is often remembered only for its European battles. In India, it also boosted local mills, since British imports fell while army demand for cloth rose.
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