Effect of British Policies on Indian Industries
What was the effect of British policies on Indian industries during the time of British colonization?
Effect of British Policies on Indian Industries
So basically when the East India Company first entered India, they were just simple merchants, who used to buy goods from the Indian market and sell them abroad at Higher prices. So, Indian Textiles and handicrafts became so much popular in Britain that the British wool industry almost collapsed and suffered huge losses. The European traders were very unhappy with this and asked the British government to take checks and measures to support the English wool industry.
Therefore, the European government banned the use of Indian textiles, but they remained popular among the people of Britain and Europe.
With the advent of industrialisation in Europe and especially Britain, manufacturing different items became cheaper. Now they were looking for raw material and well well-established market to sell their manufactured goods.
The English East India Company started exporting British manufactured goods to India to create India as A Marketplace of British manufactured goods. As the administration of some states like Bengal had also passed into the hands of the British, they now extracted revenues from the local people, put their interests, and tried to control the Indian trade. The company used political control and utilised its revenues from Bengal to finance the exports of Indian goods. The Weavers from Bengal were forced to sell their product is a very cheap price to the British, with they had fixed even if they had to face huge losses. The British imported cheap and fine quality raw materials from India and sold their manufactured goods at very high prices all around the world. Indian weavers lost both domestic and foreign markets after 1813 due to the process of industrialisation in Britain. Agricultural India was made the raw material factory of industrial England. The British government promoted the free entry of British goods into the country, while Indian goods had to pay a huge amount of entry tax when entering Britain.
Indian Handicrafts were forced to compete in a cutthroat competition with British machine-manufactured goods.
India was transformed into a consumer of British goods and a supplier of raw materials. It was forced to export raw materials like raw cotton and silk, and materials like tea and Indigo, which were in short supply in Britain, and therefore the Indian market of manufactured goods and handicrafts was ruined completely because of British industrialisation.
– Written By Soniya Sanyal
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