Key Points

Proto-industrialisation was the phase of large-scale industrial production for an international market that existed before the rise of factories. It was based in the countryside, with merchants supplying money to peasants and artisans to produce goods from their homes.

The earliest factories in England emerged in the 1730s. Richard Arkwright created the cotton mill, which brought costly new machines and all production processes under one roof and management, allowing for better supervision and quality control.

Industrial change in Britain was slow. New industries like cotton and metal did not easily displace traditional ones, and new technology was expensive and adopted cautiously. The typical worker was a craftsperson, not a machine operator.

Many Victorian industrialists preferred hand labour because there was no shortage of workers, keeping wages low. Seasonal industries and the demand for goods with intricate designs also made human skill more suitable than machines.

The abundance of labour led to job scarcity, seasonal unemployment, and low wages. Getting a job often depended on networks of friends and family, and the fear of unemployment made workers hostile to new, labour-saving technology.

Invented by James Hargreaves in 1764, the Spinning Jenny speeded up the spinning process. Women who survived on hand spinning attacked these new machines as they feared losing their livelihoods.

Before the age of machines, silk and cotton goods from India dominated the international textile market. Trade was carried out through a network of Indian merchants and bankers from ports like Surat and Hoogly.

The East India Company established a monopoly on trade and asserted control over weavers. It appointed paid servants called 'gomasthas' to supervise production and used a system of loans and advances to tie weavers to the company.

As cotton industries grew in England, Indian markets were flooded with cheap, machine-made textiles from Manchester. This led to the collapse of the Indian export market and the shrinking of the local market for Indian weavers.

The first cotton mill in Bombay was established in 1854, followed by jute mills in Bengal. By 1874, spinning and weaving mills had started in Kanpur, Ahmedabad, and Madras.

Early Indian industrialists like Dwarkanath Tagore in Bengal, and Parsis like Dinshaw Petit and Jamsetjee Nusserwanjee Tata in Bombay, accumulated their initial wealth through trade, including the opium trade with China.

Getting a job in a mill was difficult, so industrialists employed a 'jobber', usually an old trusted worker. The jobber got people from his village, secured them jobs, and helped them settle, often becoming a figure of authority and power.

The First World War boosted Indian industrial growth. British mills were busy with war production, so Manchester imports into India declined, giving Indian mills a vast home market to supply and opportunities to produce war materials.

Despite the growth of factories, large industries remained a small segment of the Indian economy. Small-scale production, including handloom weaving, predominated and even expanded in the twentieth century due to technological changes like the fly shuttle.

British manufacturers used labels on cloth bundles, often with images of Indian gods, goddesses, or royalty, to make their products familiar and seem legitimate. Indian manufacturers' advertisements carried nationalist messages of Swadeshi.