Factories In India During The Age of Industrialisation

Class 10 History Chapter 5 Age of Industrialisation

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This article speaks about factories in India during the age of industrialisation. In India first cotton mill was established in 1854 in Bombay. However, actual production was started after two years. By the end of 1862 about four mills started their production. These mills have 94000 spindles and 2150 looms. At the same time hute mills were also established in Bengal. First mill was established in 1855 whereas, the second mill in 1862. In 1860’s the Elgin mill was established in Kanpur. After this, first cotton mill of Ahmedabad was formed. In 1874, first spinning and weaving mill of Madra started its production.

The Early Entrepreneurs




From late eighteenth century, Britishers started exporting opium to China and importing tea from China. Thus, many Indians started providing supporting services for this trade such as providing finance, shipping consignment, etc. Dwarkanath Tagore in Bengal, earned good capital through export and other support services. Also, he established six joint stock companies in between 1830 to 1840. Dinshaw Petit and Jamsetji Nusserwanjee Tata, in Bombay, accumulated their income obtained from trade with China and Britain and used it to build industries. Seth Hukumchand, established first Indian Jute mill in Calcutta in 1917 also used money obtained from trading with China. In same manner, Shiv Narayan Birla and Baldeo Das Birla established industries in India.

Factories in India- Other trade Network

For gaining capital, merchants from madras started trading with Burma whereas, some others formed links with Middle East and East Africa. Some people continued trade practices within India. These include carrying goods from one place to another, banking, transferring funds between cities and by financing the traders. By accumulated money many of traders opened factories.

Factories in India – Effect of colonial control

With increase in colonial control, Indian trade began to decline. Traders were forces from exporting manufactured goods, they were allowed to transfer only raw materials which ws needed by Britishers. Moreover, Britishers slowly controlled large sector of Indian industries. During this time three new biggest companies were Bird Heilgers & Co. Andrew Yule and Jardine Skinner & Co. These industries gather capital, setup joint -stock companies and manage them. The financing was done mostly by Indians but still the investment and business related decisions were made by only European Agencies. British merchant-industrialists had their own chamber of commerce i.e. a type of business network, in which Indians were not allowed.


Factories in India – Workers

Initially workers used to be from same district. Moreover peasants and artisans, visited industrial centers for work as they do not have work in villages. With time people started travelling longer distance to get work in the mills. At that time getting work was much difficult. This was because, the number of workers needed for an industry was very few. Most of times, industrialist employ old trusted workers to recruit to workers called jobber. A jobber called people from his village or in relation, offer them job as well as help them to settle in the city. Over the time, number of factory workers increased. In 1901, indian factories got 5,84,000 workers. Till 1946 workers increased to 24,36,000.
Keywords: Age of Industrialisation, Industrialisation

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