Most individuals from India have been traveling to various parts of the world, including England, since 1600-roughly as long as the English people have been sailing to India. Most histories of India, England, and colonialism seem to neglect the accounts of the Indian travelers. The mainstream of colonialism in South Asia comprised the movement of Britons outwards who discovered, traded, conquered, ruled, and wrote about India. From the mid-eighteenth century, a small but growing number of Indians started to produce written travel narratives. This paper will look at the theme of industrialization, particularly in India.
Despite the Europeans having esteemed trade with India from ancient times, the extensive journey amongst these areas was disposed to many latent hesitant chunks and middlemen’s complications, which made trade dangerous, undependable, and affluent. This was particularly correct after the antique Silk Road was all but closed by the Mongol Empire’s fall and the Ottoman Empire’s rise.[1]. Because of the distance of the endeavor, dealers had to create fortified posts as Europeans, controlled by the Portuguese, begun to examine sea transportation means to evade middlemen. The British provided the East India Firm with this role. It first gained a foothold in India by attaining the go-ahead from home-grown authorities to possess the land, reinforce its holdings, and engage in duty-free trade in cooperative agreements. As a result of its involvement in wars, which forced other European businesses to withdraw, the corporation eventually gained geographical paramountcy over Bengal, toppling the Nawab and installing a puppet in 1757.[2] The Nawab’s administrative headquarters were relocated to Calcutta under Warren Hastings’ management in the 1770s, consolidating the corporation’s rule over Bengal. Bengal came under the indirect jurisdiction of the British regimè at a similar time as the British Parliament began controlling the East India firm via various India Acts. Over the following eighty years, several combats, agreements, and seizures expanded the firm’s dominance over the subcontinent, reducing the majority of India to the will of British administrators and traders.
The East India Firm’s neglect welcomed a huge share of the culpability for rebellion. The Government of India provided the British monarch power over India.[3]. The state administrator for India was provided with the remaining power of the mercantile firm. He would supervise the India Office and be helped and guided, mostly in monetary aspects, by the Council of India, which was initially comprised of nearly 14 Britons, 7 of whom were selected by the old firm’s court of management and seven that the king selected. Though some of the most significant influential radical figures in Britain helped as secretaries of the Indian state during the 19th century, real influence over the nation’s régime continued in the hands of British vicereines, who alienated their time between Kolkata and Shimla and their steel frame of 1,500 Indian Civil Service workers dispatched on the spot across British India.
Economically, it was a time of booming trade, early industrial growth, increased commercial agricultural production, and terrible famine. India was saddled with the total cost of the mutiny in 1857–1859, which was equal to a single year’s value of income, and it was repaid in four years from improved revenue resources. During that time, land revenue remained the principal source of revenue for the government. As a proportion of the agricultural output of Indian soil, it remained a yearly wager in monsoon rains. It typically donated nearly half of British India’s gross yearly income, or around the amount required to uphold the armed militaries.[4] The state’s-upheld monopoly over the thriving opium traffic to China was the second-biggest revenue foundation at the period, followed by the tax on salt, which the monarch likewise fiercely preserved as its official proprietary preserve. To cover the war discrepancy, a personal revenue tax was employed for five years; nevertheless, individual municipal revenue was not included as a consistent base of Indian income until 1886.
The railroad network that quickly developed over the subcontinent after 1858, when there were just 200 miles of track in India, was Britain’s most significant influence on India’s financial prosperity through the crown law. British railroad companies had finished more than 5,000 miles of steel track by 1869, and by 1900, about 25,000 miles of rail were installed. By the commencement of World War I (1914–18), the total had grown to 35,000 miles.[5], or nearly the entire rail network’s expansion in British India. The railroads initially turned out to be a mixed blessing for the majority of Indians because they facilitated the extraction of raw materials from India and the change from existence to viable agricultural creation by linking India’s agricultural, village-based heartland to the British grand port towns of Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta. Using the trains to travel inland, middlemen employed by port-city agency houses persuaded village headmen to convert sizable plots of land with grain yields to commercial crops.
During the initial time of crown power, British India developed past its firm limitations and to the northeast and northwest. Pathan raiders acted as a continuous draw and justification for proponents of imperialism in the colonial offices of Calcutta and Simla and the imperial state offices at Whitehall, London. The turbulent tribal frontier to the northwest continued to be a continual basis of harassment to settled British law. Russian expansion into Central Asia in the 1860s increased British proconsuls’ concern and motivation to expand the Indian empire’s frontier beyond the Hindu Kush Mountain range and, in fact, all the way up to Afghanistan’s northern border along the Amu Darya. The northwest frontier punitive expedition policy, widely believed as the simple, cheap means of pacifying the Pathans, was generally considered the most effective strategy. As a ruler, Lord Lawrence, that ruled from 1864-69, maintained the same border pacification strategy and steadfastly resisted being prodded or seduced into the constantly simmering political quagmire that is Afghanistan.
In the 1880s, the Indian National Congress rose to prominence, according to Bayly, primarily due to India’s marvelous recent contacts with the West. From the perspective of colonial administrators, the burgeoning political class posed a danger to the British administration, necessitating the need to delegitimize their message and restrict their voice. According to Bayly’s remarks, the Indian National Congress had the potential to empower the colonized (elites)[6], but the metropole saw this as a byproduct of the civilizing mission. The Indian National Congress could be seen as a mimic of Western ruling establishments, translating between higher politics and the proletariat, mobilizing Indian people through rhetoric, but never accepting radical legitimacy in the empire, in line with Bhabha’s mimicry framework where learned, male elite Indians turned into a mimic of the white, British, male colonizer. For British administrators like Hume, the Indian National Congress was not a chance to seize power from the British government as it eventually did, but rather an opportunity to demonstrate that it was “a true and 12 wise national institution,” a kind of committee for exchanging thoughts about India in a “modern” way. Henry’s lecture series and criticism of Indian institutions and leadership were greatly influenced by it.
Marshall asserts that the (male) colonizer and colonized were compelled to oppose one another during colonial activities.[7]. The predetermined system of superiority and inferiority caused a psychological shift in identity that cut beyond gender, morality, and overt and covert power limits. Metropolitan and colonized citizens became “Intimate Enemies” due to the distinctions drawn within and between these categories. For fear of having their standing questioned, there was pressure on the imperial officials to be strong and uphold the imperial values.[8]. On the other hand, Marshall contends that Indians altered the definitions of the categories to which they were confined to achieve some semblance of “autonomy” inside the colonial system “in the face of defeat, indignity, exploitation, and violence.”
Early in the 18th century, India was a significant aspect of the worldwide textile sector. Still, it had lost its export market and a large portion of its local market in the middle of the century. Therefore, India experienced secular deindustrialization. In 1750, India accounted for around 25% of global industrial output; by 1900, this proportion had dropped to just 2%[9]. The existing literature mostly blames Britain’s textile manufacturing productivity increase and the global transportation revolution for India’s deindustrialization. Production in India became increasingly unprofitable due to increased British productivity, which first affected village production before spreading to factory items.
Reducing sea freight charges that promoted specialization and trade for India and Britain amplified these effects. Thus, Britain initially attained power over India’s export market before attaining power over its internal market. An effective tool in the Indian nationalists’ arsenal to criticize colonial rule was this argument for deindustrialization. The historical literature offers a second justification for deindustrialization in the economic downturn India experienced after Mughal control was abolished in the 18th century. Even if some manufacturers profited from the new arrangement, we think the unrest brought on by this political realignment eventually contributed to supply-side problems for Indian manufacturing.[10]. A third argument for India’s deindustrialization, like the first, has its foundation in the forces of globalization. During the late 18th century, India’s commodity export industry saw a significant development in trade relative to textiles, which attracted workers away from textiles.
Conclusion
India’s deindustrialization occurred between 1750 and 1860, and that century can be divided into two primary epochs with quite diverse deindustrialization causes. The Mughal Empire’s collapse led to the first period, which lasted roughly from 1750 to 1810[11]. The expansion of revenue farming, rising rent costs, war-related price increases for agricultural inputs, and a reduction in regional trade in the sub-continent all contributed to a decline in foodgrain agriculture production as central authority eroded. As grain prices increased, the nominal pay also increased since employees’ living standard was close to subsistence. As a result, the own wage in Indian textile production increased, which decreased India’s ability to compete in the export market. As a result, when most British outputs were still done through the cottage system, Britain gained ground on India in the global textile market. Additionally, intersectoral trade terms shifted away from textiles, promoting the development of agricultural commodities. India experienced the fastest decline in its proportion of global industrial production among non-European nations.
The relative price of textiles decreased dramatically during the second epoch, roughly from 1810 to 1860, due to increased productivity brought on by the adoption of the factory system. This trend was particularly pronounced in India, where a global transportation revolution further lowered textile prices everywhere in the periphery. Thus, even though Indian agriculture’s production stopped declining throughout this time under the security of firm administration and despite the slowing and stabilizing rise in grain charges, the cost of grain kept rising. India had a two-part shift from being a net exporter to an importer of textiles by the year 1860. A long-run downturn in commerce that lasted until the late 1930s began after a secular rise there stopped, reversed, and began. A decline in terms of trade meant that the textile industry, which competed with imports, was no longer punished by adverse external price shocks. India’s deindustrialization had ended by the late 19th century, and a steady reindustrialization process had started.
References
Primary source
Travels in India, During the Years 1780, 1781, 1782, & 1783, by William Hodges
https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=_Ssk4K6QmxcC&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=travels+to+india&ots=dCkxJovqfh&sig=Dk_reGIodI5v1vuEEJ8dZMHDTrI#v=onepage&q&f=false
secondary source
Marshall, P. J. “The Whites of British India, 1780-1830: A Failed Colonial Society?” The International History Review, vol. 12, no. 1, 1990, pp. 26–44. JSTOR
http://www.jstor.org/stable/40106131. Accessed 23 Feb. 2023.
Bagchi, Amiya Kumar. “Deindustrialization in India in the nineteenth century: Some theoretical implications.” The Journal of Development Studies 12, no. 2 (1976): 135-164.
Bayly, C. A., ‘The Growth of Political Stability in India, 1780–1830’, Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars: North Indian Society in the Age of British Expansion 1770-1870, 3rd ed, Oxford India Perennials Series (Delhi, 2012; online edn, Oxford Academic, 20 Sept. 2012),
https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198077466.003.0019
Dr. Douglas M. Peers (2005) Colonial knowledge and the military in India, 1780–1860, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 33:2, 157-180, DOI: 10.1080/0308653050012
Lal, Deepak. Ideology and industrialization in India and East Asia. The World Bank, 1986
[1] Marshall, P. J. “The Whites of British India, 1780-1830: A Failed Colonial Society?” The International History Review, vol. 12, no. 1, 1990, pp. 26–44. JSTOR
[2] Travels in India, During the Years 1780, 1781, 1782, & 1783, by William Hodges
[3] Marshall, P. J. “The Whites of British India, 1780-1830: A Failed Colonial Society?” The International History Review, vol. 12, no. 1, 1990, pp. 26–44. JSTOR
[4] Marshall, P. J. “The Whites of British India, 1780-1830: A Failed Colonial Society?” The International History Review, vol. 12, no. 1, 1990, pp. 26–44. JSTOR
[5] Bagchi, Amiya Kumar. “Deindustrialization in India in the nineteenth century: Some theoretical implications.” The Journal of Development Studies 12, no. 2 (1976): 135-164.
[6] Bayly, C. A., ‘The Growth of Political Stability in India, 1780–1830’, Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars: North Indian Society in the Age of British Expansion 1770-1870, 3rd ed, Oxford India Perennials Series (Delhi, 2012; online edn, Oxford Academic, 20 Sept. 2012),
[7] Marshall, P. J. “The Whites of British India, 1780-1830: A Failed Colonial Society?” The International History Review, vol. 12, no. 1, 1990, pp. 26–44. JSTOR
[8] Lal, Deepak. Ideology and industrialization in India and East Asia. The World Bank, 1986.
[9] Dr. Douglas M. Peers (2005) Colonial knowledge and the military in India, 1780–1860, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 33:2, 157-180, DOI: 10.1080/0308653050012
[10] Dr. Douglas M. Peers (2005) Colonial knowledge and the military in India, 1780–1860, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 33:2, 157-180, DOI: 10.1080/0308653050012
[11] Bagchi, Amiya Kumar. “Deindustrialization in India in the nineteenth century: Some theoretical implications.” The Journal of Development Studies 12, no. 2 (1976): 135-164.
write