The story is current in Bengal that, in order to avoid being forced to weave for the Company, many weavers used to cut off their own thumbs. This story is perhaps merely a popular invention, but there is not the slightest doubt about the great misery and oppression suffered by the poor weavers at this time at the hands of the Company’s servants. Verelst, writing in 1767, refers to the unusual scarcity of weavers, a great number of whom deserted their profession. Thus the monopolistic control of the Company, and the misconduct of its servants, paved the way for the ruin of cotton and silk weaving, the two flourishing industries of Bengal. Cornwallis made an earnest effort to revive the trade by stopping the two evils, but almost irreparable mischief had already been done.
4. English competition. The ruin of the weavers in Bengal was completed by the unfair competition of manufacturers in England. As soon as cotton and silk goods exported by the East India Company became popular in England, the jealous British manufacturers wanted to kill the industry by legislation. By the two laws passed by Parliament in 1700 and 1720, cotton and silk goods imported from India “could not be worn or otherwise used in England”. There was, however, a great demand for these things in other European countries, and hence all the goods imported by the Company to England used to be exported to various other countries of Europe. But on account of the hostilities between England and other European powers, first during the War of American Independence and again during the Napoleonic wars, this re-export of Indian goods suffered a severe setback, and in 1779 there was a sudden fall in the import of cotton goods from Bengal. Further, on a memorial of the British calico printers in 1780, the Court of Directors agreed to stop the importation of printed cotton goods from Bengal for a term of four years.
Artificial restriction of imports by legislation gave a fillip to the cotton industry of England. By a series of inventions, the English cotton manufacturers improved the quality of their goods, and the Court of Directors observed in their letter of 20th August, 1788, that the duty and freight on the Company’s imports had already enabled the English manufacturers to undersell Indian cotton goods in the British market. Hence the Company followed the policy of importing raw materials, viz. cotton, in place of manufactured goods. Next, they exported Manchester cotton goods to Bengal. With the perfection of the power loom, Manchester began to produce immense quantities of cheap cotton goods, and soon they flooded the markets of India. The average value of cotton goods annually exported from England wad about l,200,000 pound-sterling between 1786 and 1790. By 1809 it had increased to I8,400,000 pound-sterling. Its subsequent progress was still more phenomenal.
Thus, at the very moment when the efforts of Cornwallis and the end of European war might have revived Bengal’s cotton industry, it was killed by the application of power-spinning and power-weaving to the manufacture of cotton goods in England. No attempt was made to protect the Bengal industry from inevitable ruin either by legislation or by the introduction of improved methods.
Thus within half a century of the battle of PIassey, the phenomenaI prosperity of Bengal suffered a serious setback from which it has not recovered even to-day. The circumstances under which the flourishing industries of Bengal were ruined, and the inland trade passed into the hands of a privileged class, almost completely crushed out of Bengal even the very spirit of trade and industry. The lack of capital, caused by the enormous drain of wealth, and the unsettled condition of the country owing to the misrule of the early period of British supremacy, made the revival of trade and industry well-nigh impossible. At the same time, the Permanent Settlement gave an impetus to agriculture and investment of capital in land. Thus while the loss of industry drove the poor people more and more to agriculture, the available capital was sunk mostly in land. The trade of the country passed into the hands of Europeans, who gradually built up their own system of commerce and banking in which people of the soil had little share. In a word, we find here the genesis of the entire economic system, which prevails to-day in Bengal.
What has been said of Bengal in respect of trade and industry, applies in a general way to the rest of India. The general impression that India has never been an industrial country is misleading in the extreme. Indian arts and crafts have been an important contributory factor to her immense wealth from time immemorial. “Even at a much later period,” so runs the Industrial Commission Report, “when the merchant adventurers from the West made their first appearance in India, the industrial development of this country was, at any rate, not inferior to that of the more advanced European nations.” The finished products of Indian industry as well as her natural products such as pearl, perfumes, dye-stuff, spices, sugar, opium, etc., were exported to distant countries and she imported gold, copper, zinc, tin, lead, wine, horses, etc. But there was always an excess of exports over imports, which meant necessarily the influx of a large quantity of gold. In the first century Pliny bitterly complained of the drain of gold from the Roman Empire caused by the use of Indian luxuries. A similar complaint was made in the eighteenth century even by Englishmen.
The chief industry in India was the weaving of cotton, silk and wool. Outside Bengal, Lucknow, Ahmadabad, Nagpur and Madura were important centres of cotton industry, and fine shawls were manufactured in the Punjab and Kashmir. Brass, copper and bell-metal wares were manufactured all over India, some of the notable centres being Benares, Tanjore, Poona, Nasik and Ahmadabad. Jewellery, stone- carving, filigree work in gold and silver, and artistic work in marble, sandalwood, ivory and glass formed other important industries. In addition, there were various other miscellaneous arts and crafts such as tannery, perfumery, paper-making, etc.
The carrying trade was also largely in the hands of the Indians. Down to the beginning of the nineteenth century A.D. the ship- building industry was more developed in India than in England. Like the Indian textile industry, it roused the jealousy of English manufacturers and its progress and development were restricted by legislation.
As in Bengal, the decay of trade and industry in the rest of India set in towards the close of the eighteenth century and its ruin was well-nigh complete by the middle of the nineteenth.
The prominent causes of the decay were the same as those operating in Bengal: the policy of the British Parliament, the competition of cheap goods produced by machinery, and the unwillingness or inability of the Indian Government to protect or encourage Indian arts and crafts. The extent to which the policy of the British Government in India was responsible for the decay of her trade and industry is a debatable point. Some writers think that it was the Industrial Revolution in England, with the application of power-spinning and power-weaving to the production of cotton goods, which ruined Indian manufacture of cotton goods, and it was impossible for the ruling authorities to make any successful effort to protect the industry, as they were quite unable to offset the enormous disparity between power and hand manufacture. Rushbrook Williams, who holds the above view, further adds: Those who would blame the British authorities for not taking steps to protect Indian cotton manufactures against the new and overwhelming advantages enjoyed by the power-driven British industry, are obliged to assume that contemporary statesmen regarded these problems from a purely modern standpoint.”
On the other hand, eminent writers, both Indian and English, have pointed out that the Industrial Revolution in England was itself “a consequence of the plundered wealth of India”, and that not only did the British authorities not take any step to protect the declining Indian industries but they actually threw obstacles in their way, and at least in some cases, discouraged Indian manufactures in order to promote those of England.
As to the last remark of Rushbrook Williams, it is necessary to remember that even as early as 1700 (and ever since), British statesmen had enough idea of the modern economic system to protect English industry by legislation from Indian competition. That similar steps were not taken to protect Indian industry, cannot, therefore, be explained by lack of statesmanship, and may, not unreasonably, be attributed to the desire on the part of the ruling authorities to promote English industry at the cost of Indian. One can, of course, entertain reasonable doubts about the success of any attempt to stem the tide of English competition. But it is a hypothetical question and raises important issues, which cannot be discussed here. The broad fact remains that during the first half of the nineteenth century, India lost the proud position of supremacy in the trade and industry of the world, which she had been occupying for well-nigh two thousand years, and was gradually transformed into a plantation for the production of raw materials and a dumping-ground for the cheap manufactured goods from the West. All the while the Government responsible for the welfare of its teeming millions looked on and did not take adequate steps to avert the calamity.
