Age of Industrialisation in India

These notes are based on the chapter Age of industrialisation from class 10 social sciences history NCERT book and CBSE syllabus.

Factories Come Up

The first cotton mill in Bombay came up in 1854 and it went into production two years later. In the 1860s, more mills came at Bombay and also at other places like Ahmedabad and Kanpur. The first cotton mill in Madras began production by 1874.

Early Entrepreneurs

Many Indian businessmen had a long history of trade with China. They actively participated in opium trade of the British India. Thus, they ended up amassing sizeable capital and started to harbor dreams of establishing big industries.

Dwarknanath Tagore was among the pioneers to begin industries in the 1830s and 1840s. Tagore's enterprise sank during the business crises of the 1840s. But in the later nineteenth century, many businessmen became successful industrialists. In Bombay, Parsis like Dinshaw Petit and Jamsetjee Nusserwanjee Tata went on to build huge industrial empires. Seth Hukumchand (a Marwari businessman) set up the first Indian jute mill in Calcutta in 1917. The Birla Group was similarly started by successful traders who gained wealth by trading with China.

Jamshetji Tata (Ref: Wikipedia)

Capital was also accumulated through other trade networks like Burma, the Middle East and Africa.

There was a virtual stranglehold of the British players on business in India which left little scope for growth of Indian merchants. Till the First World War, European Managing Agencies controlled a large sector of Indian industries.

Workers' Origin

Workers generally came from neighboring districts and villages. Workers generally returned to their villages during harvests and festivals. After some growth in the industry, workers from greater distances also started to migrate to the new industrial hubs. For example, people from the United Provinces (modern Uttar Pradesh) began to migrate to Bombay and Calcutta in search of livelihood.

Getting a job was not easy. One had to rely on relatives and acquaintances for getting a job. Industrialists usually employed a jobber to hire new people. The jobber was usually an old and trusted worker. The jobber usually preferred people from his own village. He helped them to settle in the city and provided financial help during crisis. The jobber thus became an influential person. He began to demand money and gifts for his favour and began to control the lives of workers.