The Age of Industrialisation

Proto-industrialisation, the coming of factories and steam power, Indian weavers under the Company, early Indian industrialists and how industry grew.

Key ideas

• Before factories, merchants organised large-scale home production for world markets in the countryside, away from town guilds (proto-industrialisation).
• Arkwright’s cotton mill brought all the processes under one roof, and the Spinning Jenny let one worker turn many spindles.
• Machines spread slowly in Britain because labour was cheap and plentiful and many goods needed skilled hands.
• The East India Company controlled weavers through paid supervisors called gomasthas and advances that tied weavers to it.
• Indian piece-goods exports collapsed as British cloth flooded India, yet handloom production survived and grew, helped by the fly shuttle.
• Early industrialists invested trade profits in industry: Bombay’s first cotton mill came up in 1854 and the Tata steel works at Jamshedpur in 1912.
• During the First World War Manchester imports fell and Indian mills supplied war needs, so industry grew.

Remember

Watch out

• Dividing a fall by the new value: divide by the old value.
• Thinking machines replaced hand labour at once.
• Mixing up the gomastha (over weavers) and the jobber (recruiting for mills).

Worked example