University:
Tyler Junior College
Course:
HIST 1301 | History
Academic year:

2024
Views:

75

Pages:

1
Author:

Dave D.

EXPANSION IN THE INDUSTRIAL AGE HIST 1301 | History India India's association with Britain, which had started trading in India in the 1600s, had a significant impact on its economic endeavours. French dominance in India was essentially ended by the Seven Years' War and the Treaty of Paris, which was signed in 1763. This allowed Britain to eventually take control of the subcontinent. India looked to have all the makings of a prime contender for industrialization at this particular period. Large merchant and artisan classes created exquisite textiles that were highly prized in England during the 16 and seventeenth centuries. By the middle of the eighteenth century, India was really the world's greatest exporter of cotton cloth. It was also prosperous, and the Mughal emperors had kept up ports, highways, and bridges to facilitate the transportation of products by producers and traders. But Britain had no intention of letting its colony become into a competitor in the economy. India, like other colonies, was intended to benefit Britain rather than to rival it. This marked the start of a trend known as deindustrialization, which is the decline in an area's or country's industrial activity. Before the British pulled the French out of India in the early eighteenth century, the British Parliament established the Calico Acts, which banned the importation of completed cotton textiles that might rival those made by English weavers. India thus lost a significant market for its products as well as a source of income. The number of workplaces that might be mechanised later in the century decreased as a result of the unemployment of many weavers. The mechanisation of British textile production only served to hasten the demise of the Indian textile sector. Indian marketplaces were overrun with cheap, mass-produced British fabric, undercutting local weavers and forcing them out of business. The British occupation did not, however, totally ruin India's economy, as local businesspeople made investments in industrial growth. For instance, the rich Hindu Dwarkanath Tagore established a bank and bought out handicraft companies. With a strong desire to collaborate with the British, he combined his funds with those of British investors to establish India's first coal mine in 1834, as well as sugar and textile companies. Other Indians made similar investments, particularly in the textile industry. In reality, Indian textile companies were effectively competing with British ones in China when Britain joined the Second Industrial Revolution. In the end, however, Indian fabrics were simply too expensive to match British goods. Cash-crop agriculture was one area of the Indian economy that Britain did support. Small farmers who were unable to pay British taxes had their farms taken from them; these properties were then joined with other areas to become cotton plantations. In the latter half of the eighteenth century, famines caused by the lack of arable land resulted in the deaths of almost thirty million people. India therefore became an export economy, turning from a manufacturing nation to one that produced mostly raw commodities, like cotton, but also tea, sugar, and opium for the British to consume and sell in China.