British Colonial Control And The Rise And Fall Of India'S Textile Industry

In the late seventeenth Century, India controls 1/4 of the world's total.

Trade.

By the middle of nineteenth Century, however, India had completely changed from

The exporting country has become an importing country.

India's cotton textile industry has been fighting for hundreds of years with Britain.

Sancho Gandhi called on people to use hand spinning machines to produce cloth for confrontation.

At that time,

To some extent, it has become a symbol of nationalism in India.

According to some economic historians, India's industrial output accounts for almost 20% of the world's total output in 1800.

However, this proportion continued to decline in the following more than 100 years.

It dropped to 8.6% in 1860 and only 1.3% in 1913.

Such a sharp decline must have the effect of rapid industrialization in the West.

But the absolute value of India's industrial output has also declined, so it has to arouse serious thinking from scholars.

Some scholars believe that during this period, "de industrialization" took place in India.

The textile industry is the most representative.

Cotton is originally produced in India, and the history of planting can be traced back to four thousand or five thousand years ago, so the handicraft textile industry in all parts of India is very developed.

By the end of the seventeenth Century, India had controlled 1/4 of the world's textile trade.

Britain imported cheap cotton cloth from the Mughal Empire, which was the main content of the two countries' trade at that time.

But in the latter half of the eighteenth Century, Britain entered the age of industrialization. From then on, it no longer imported cotton cloth to India, only imported cotton as raw material, and made India a dumping ground for finished products.

A study of 1880 statistics shows that cotton consumption in India was about 291000 tons per year, 54.4% of which was imported from the United Kingdom.

The impact of British cotton on India can be measured either by quantity or by price.

If the price is measured, the impact of Britain may be even greater.

By the middle of nineteenth Century, India had changed from a cotton exporter to an importing country.

The cotton spinning industry in India can be divided into two levels: the first layer is a small peasant handmade cotton cloth that spreads all over the villages and towns for thousands of years.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of handmade cotton cloth, namely, homespun cloth, is of low quality, can only produce and sell itself, and does not enter the market; the second level is high quality and commercial cotton production.

The rich class has a great demand for high-grade cotton cloth.

With the introduction of British cotton cloth, this layer of textile industry collapsed rapidly, but the impact on the underlying cloth was limited.

The distinction between these two levels is very subtle, and there are many technical problems to be clarified.

From a consumer perspective, the number of cotton consumed and consumed by Indians in the first half of nineteenth Century is only 2/3 of that in the latter half of nineteenth Century.

The increasing consumption of people will have a positive impact on India's cotton spinning industry, otherwise it will be magnified by the impact of Britain.

There is a lack of accurate India population statistics in the first half of nineteenth Century.

If we calculate ahead of the rate of population change, even if the population growth rate is not outstanding, it will increase by 50% in those decades.

Assuming that every household will spin and weave, the growth of homespun is consistent with the population growth rate. The impact of India cotton textile industry on British cotton cloth may be overestimated by most economists.

There are two different views on whether British cotton cloth has caused a large number of India textile workers to lose their jobs.

It is estimated that in 1850, there were 6 million textile workers in India, only 2 million 400 thousand in 1880 and 2 million 300 thousand in 1913.

India's GDP and population are growing slowly, while the number of textile workers is decreasing, which confirms the "de industrialization" formulation.

But another scholar does not agree with this view.

One reason is that the Indian demand curve for cotton has shifted in the past half century.

A large number of cheap cotton cloth into India, so that Indians can buy more cotton cloth at the same price.

Meanwhile, the import of cotton cloth in the United Kingdom has also greatly increased the competitiveness of the market, prompting the enterprising India textile enterprises to make efforts to increase productivity.

So the decline in the number of employed industrial workers is not entirely attributable to competition in Britain, but also to the efficiency of India's local businesses.

In the early days, the added value of the imported cotton cloth was not high in the UK, and it was lack of exquisite patterns.

India's locally sophisticated cotton fabrics still maintain their status.

A few decades later, the amount of cotton imported into India did not increase much, and revenue increased much, even after considering the exchange rate factor.

A natural explanation for this is that the value of cotton cloth exported to India is increasing.

By the late nineteenth Century, the British cotton cloth had finally defeated India cotton cloth in the high-end market and returned some of the low-end market to India.

Faced with challenges, India's domestic market quietly started a revolution around 1860s.

Some businessmen introduced looms from England and began producing cotton cloth with the same technology, competing with the British for the market.

Following the idea of mercantilism, the British always wanted to dump the colony as raw material and manufactured goods, but never thought that it would also become a place of production.

India set an example for other colonies.

India's local mechanized textile industry originated in Mumbai.

A cotton merchant named Dawa has gained huge profits in pporting India cotton to Europe and the United States.

He is not satisfied with raw material trade, he always thinks about production.

In 1856, he bought machines from England to start production and processing. By 1862, the textile factories in Mumbai had been quite large.

Since then, the scale and volume of India textile mills have increased by leaps and bounds. The spindle has increased from 338000 in 1861 to 593000 in 1874, and the demand for cotton in India has also doubled.

India textile enterprises can not only satisfy the local market, but also have the ability to export.

Although the scale of the textile industry in India is still very small compared with that in the UK, for example, the number of cotton consumed annually by the India textile mill is only 7% of that in the British textile mill, but the British have been unable to sit on it. Through a bill, India is exempt from customs duties on imported yarn from the United Kingdom.

Originally, the textile industry in India was hit hard by these policies. But in the thirty years after nineteenth Century, India's financial industry experienced a "rupee depreciation", which hindered and delayed the dumping of British textiles to India to a certain extent.

But India's "rupee appreciation" soon took place, and the local textile industry, which had just slowed down, was hit hard. In addition, a series of restrictions made by colonists to restrict the local textile industry, India's textile industry was once again in the doldrums.

It was also during this period that India's nationalism began to rise and its resistance to the British became organized, and the textile industry was the leader.

India's cotton textile industry has been fighting for hundreds of years with Britain.

Until the time of Sancho Gandhi, we still called on people to use hand spinning machines to produce cloth for confrontation.

At that time, spinning cars had become a symbol of nationalism in India to some extent.