#1
To all those who claim that the British “deindustrialised” India, and Nehru started us off on the right path.
Do you know when and how India’s textile industry developed?
#2
You all know that George Orwell was a dedicated opponent of communism and, especially Fascism. But he was also a dedicated socialist. He wrote a three-part essay calling for the socialist takeover of Britain. I won’t give you the name of the essay, because then you will be able to google and find it.
In that essay, what did he give as “proof” that socialism would work better than capitalism?
Just a little hint for those wanting to answer Q1.
I wonder what the Tatas and Birlas (and Wadias and Dalmiyas and Jains, etc) were doing during British times. Tilling the family farm?
Quote:
Industrially, the British suffocated India, gradually strangling Indian industries, whose finished products, textiles in particular, were of a quality unique in the world, which had made them famous over the centuries. Instead, they oriented Indian industry towards jute, cotton, tea, oil seeds, which they needed as raw materials for their home industries. They employed cheap labour for their enterprises, while traditional artisanat were perishing. India, which used to be a land of plenty, ” where milk and honey flowed “, started slowly dying. According to British records, One million Indians died of famine between 1800 and 1825; 4 million between 1825 and 1850; 5 million between 1850 and 1875; and 15 million between 1875 and 1900. Thus, 25 million Indians died in one hundred years ! The British may be proud of their bloody record. It is probably more honourable and straightforward to kill in the name of Allah, than under the guise of petty commercial interest and total disregard for the ways of a 5000 year civilisation. Thus, by the turn of the century, India was bled dry and had no resources left. Fortunately, visionaries, like Jemshadji Tata, started important industries so that there would be a structure at independence, but in the face of so much resistance by the British. In textiles for example, they imposed the free entry of Lancashire products and slapped a heavy tax on export of Indian textiles. Is it necessary to remind too, how the English “exported” Indian labour all over the world in their colonies, whether to Sri Lanka for the tea plantations, to Fiji, to South Africa, or to the West Indies?
Unquote
Source: http://www.geocities.com/dipalsarvesh/6.html
Although European traders were drawn to India, China and the east coast of Africa by the lure of spice-trade profits, they also brought back carpets and textiles. Cloth, for example, was produced all over India in a variety of styles, fabrics and patterns. The main Indian cottons used by the British were calico, a stout cloth, and muslin, a much finer fabric.
During the 17th and 18th centuries, Indian textiles were in great demand. The East India Company began to dominate textile production by squeezing out the Indian middlemen.
British textile factories learned the art of producing Indian textiles. Woollen shawls with semi-abstract decorative motifs, from the Kashmir region in the north of India, formed part of the Glossary – opens new windowMughal wardrobe. In the early 19th century manufacturers in Scotland began to copy and reinterpret the Kashmiri designs, to create what came to be known as ‘Paisley’ patterns.
Between 1813 and 1833, production of textiles in India declined dramatically. Fabrics patterned and styled along Indian lines began to be produced by British manufacturers across the Midlands and Yorkshire. These products were in turn exported into the Indian market at inflated prices, which had a detrimental effect upon Indian producers and consumers alike.
oops, sourced from the horse’s mouth, so to speak:
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/blackhistory/culture/influencing.htm
Around 8 years ago the Tatas ran an ad series about Jamshedji Tata about how he built India’s first steel plant against great odds. The Tatas seemed to be very proud of it.
It is instructive that even after building several steel plants in Britain for using Indian Iron ore, not one British company built a steel plant in India. Any logical businessman would have built one near the centre of resource and shipped the product. It would have at the minimum saved shipping cost.
It is well known that India had a large economy before being colonised. I came upon some interesting statistic sometime ago. Around 1880, India’s GDP was 4% of the world while that of Britain was 5%. In about 30 to 40 years the combined GDP had risen to 14% with India having 5% and Britain with 9%. Considering the size of India and Britain, colonialism was enormously profitable for Britain.(I came upon the figure in an essay critiquing Niall Ferguson, I am not able to find it. I am not 100% sure of the figures).
Wasn’t George Orwell an left anarchist. I would like to see the essay title.