Aadishesh/ncerts · Datasets at Hugging Face

text stringlengths 1 900
raw materials increased equally fast. Between 1812 and 1871, the
share of raw cotton exports rose from 5 per cent to 35 per cent.Indigo used for dyeing cloth was another important export forFig. 17 – East India Company House, London.
This was the nerve centre of the worldwide operations of the East India Company.
Fig. 18 – A distant view of Suratand its river.All through the seventeenth and earlyeighteenth centuries, Surat remainedthe main centre of overseas trade inthe western Indian Ocean.91
The Making of a Global World
Fig. 19 – The trade routes that linked India to the world at the end of the seventeenth century.many decades. And, as you have read last year, opium shipments to
China grew rapidly from the 1820s to become for a while India’ssingle largest export. Britain grew opium in India and exported it to
China and, with the money earned through this sale, it financed its
tea and other imports from China.
Over the nineteenth century, British manufactures flooded the Indian
market. Food grain and raw material exports from India to Britain
and the rest of the world increased. But the value of British exportsto India was much higher than the value of British imports from
India. Thus Britain had a ‘trade surplus’ with India. Britain used this
surplus to balance its trade deficits with other countries – that is,with countries from which Britain was importing more than it was
selling to. This is how a multilateral settlement system works –
it allows one country’s deficit with another country to be settledby its surplus with a third country. By helping Britain balance its
deficits, India played a crucial role in the late-nineteenth-century
world economy.
Britain’s trade surplus in India also helped pay the so-called ‘home
charges’ that included private remittances home by British officials
and traders, interest payments on India’s external debt, and pensionsof British officials in India.
Surat
GoaMadrasMasulipatamHoogly
BangkokHanoiCanton
Malacca
Batavia
BantamAchehMuscatBandar AbbasBasraAleppo
Alexandria
Jedda
MachaLahoreBukhara
Yarkand TheGreatWall
Mombasa
Mozambique
Sea route
Land route
Volume of trade passing through the portRed SeaPersian Gulf
Indian OceanIndia and the Contemporary World
923 The Inter-war Economy
The First World War (1914-18) was mainly fought in Europe. But
its impact was felt around the world. Notably for our concernsin this chapter, it plunged the first half of the twentieth centuryinto a crisis that took over three decades to overcome. Duringthis period the world experienced widespread economic andpolitical instability, and another catastrophic war.
3.1 Wartime Transformations
The First World War, as you know, was fought between two powerblocs. On the one side were the Allies – Britain, France and Russia(later joined by the US); and on the opposite side were the CentralPowers – Germany, Austria-Hungary and Ottoman Turkey. Whenthe war began in August 1914, many governments thought it wouldbe over by Christmas. It lasted more than four years.
The First World War was a war like no other before. The fighting
involved the world’s leading industrial nations which nowharnessed the vast powers of modern industry to inflict the greatestpossible destruction on their enemies.
This war was thus the first modern industrial war. It saw the use
of machine guns, tanks, aircraft, chemical weapons, etc. on amassive scale. These were all increasingly products of modern large-scale industry. To fight the war, millions of soldiershad to be recruited from around the world andmoved to the frontlines on large ships and trains.
The scale of death and destruction – 9 million dead
and 20 million injured – was unthinkable before the
industrial age, without the use of industrial arms.
Most of the killed and maimed were men of
working age. These deaths and injuries reduced theable-bodied workforce in Europe. With fewernumbers within the family, household incomesdeclined after the war.
During the war, industries were restructured to
produce war-related goods. Entire societies werealso reorganised for war – as men went to battle,women stepped in to undertake jobs that earlier only
men were expected to do.
Fig. 20 – Workers in a munition factory during the First World
War.Production of armaments increased rapidly to meet war demands.93
The Making of a Global WorldThe war led to the snapping of economic links between some of
the world’s largest economic powers which were now fightingeach other to pay for them. So Britain borrowed large sumsof money from US banks as well as the US public. Thus the war
transformed the US from being an international debtor to an
international creditor. In other words, at the war’s end, the US andits citizens owned more overseas assets than foreign governmentsand citizens owned in the US.
3.2 Post-war Recovery
Post-war economic recovery proved difficult. Britain, which wasthe world’s leading economy in the pre-war period, in particularfaced a prolonged crisis. While Britain was preoccupied with war,
industries had developed in India and Japan. After the war Britain
found it difficult to recapture its earlier position of dominance inthe Indian market, and to compete with Japan internationally.Moreover, to finance war expenditures Britain had borrowed liberally
from the US. This meant that at the end of the war Britain was
burdened with huge external debts.
The war had led to an economic boom, that is, to a large increase in
demand, production and employment. When the war boom ended,production contracted and unemployment increased. At the
same time the government reduced bloated war expenditures to
bring them into line with peacetime revenues. These developmentsled to huge job losses – in 1921 one in every five British workerswas out of work. Indeed, anxiety and uncertainty about work
became an enduring part of the post-war scenario.
Many agricultural economies were also in crisis. Consider the case
of wheat producers. Before the war, eastern Europe was a majorsupplier of wheat in the world market. When this supply was
disrupted during the war, wheat production in Canada, America
and Australia expanded dramatically. But once the war was over,production in eastern Europe revived and created a glut in wheatoutput. Grain prices fell, rural incomes declined, and farmers fell
deeper into debt.
3.3 Rise of Mass Production and Consumption
In the US, recovery was quicker. We have already seen how the warhelped boost the US economy. After a short period of economicIndia and the Contemporary World
94trouble in the years after the war, the US economy resumed
its strong growth in the early 1920s.
One important feature of the US economy of the 1920s
was mass production. The move towards mass productionhad begun in the late nineteenth century, but in the 1920s itbecame a characteristic feature of industrial production inthe US. A well-known pioneer of mass production was thecar manufacturer Henry Ford. He adapted the assembly lineof a Chicago slaughterhouse (in which slaughtered animalswere picked apart by butchers as they came down a conveyorbelt) to his new car plant in Detroit. He realised that the
‘assembly line’ method would allow a faster and cheaper way
of producing vehicles. The assembly line forced workers torepeat a single task mechanically and continuously – such asfitting a particular part to the car – at a pace dictated by theconveyor belt. This was a way of increasing the output per workerby speeding up the pace of work. Standing in front of a conveyorbelt no worker could afford to delay the motions, take a break, oreven have a friendly word with a workmate. As a result, HenryFord’s cars came off the assembly line at three-minute intervals, aspeed much faster than that achieved by previous methods. The T-Model Ford was the world’s first mass-produced car.
At first workers at the Ford factory were unable to cope with the
stress of working on assembly lines in which they could not control
the pace of work. So they quit in large numbers. In desperationFord doubled the daily wage to $5 in January 1914. At the sametime he banned trade unions from operating in his plants.
Henry Ford recovered the high wage by repeatedly speeding up
the production line and forcing workers to work ever harder. Somuch so, he would soon describe his decision to double the dailywage as the ‘best cost-cutting decision’ he had ever made.
Fordist industrial practices soon spread in the US. They were also
widely copied in Europe in the 1920s. Mass production loweredcosts and prices of engineered goods. Thanks to higher wages,more workers could now afford to purchase durable consumer
goods such as cars. Car production in the US rose from 2 million in
1919 to more than 5 million in 1929. Similarly, there was a spurtin the purchase of refrigerators, washing machines, radios,gramophone players, all through a system of ‘hire purchase’ (i.e., on
Fig. 21 – T-Model automobiles lined up outside the
factory.95
The Making of a Global Worldcredit repaid in weekly or monthly instalments). The demand
for refrigerators, washing machines, etc. was also fuelled by a boomin house construction and home ownership, financed once again
by loans.
The housing and consumer boom of the 1920s created the basis of
prosperity in the US. Large investments in housing and household

raw materials increased equally fast. Between 1812 and 1871, the

share of raw cotton exports rose from 5 per cent to 35 per cent.Indigo used for dyeing cloth was another important export forFig. 17 – East India Company House, London.

This was the nerve centre of the worldwide operations of the East India Company.

Fig. 18 – A distant view of Suratand its river.All through the seventeenth and earlyeighteenth centuries, Surat remainedthe main centre of overseas trade inthe western Indian Ocean.91

The Making of a Global World

Fig. 19 – The trade routes that linked India to the world at the end of the seventeenth century.many decades. And, as you have read last year, opium shipments to

China grew rapidly from the 1820s to become for a while India’ssingle largest export. Britain grew opium in India and exported it to

China and, with the money earned through this sale, it financed its

tea and other imports from China.

Over the nineteenth century, British manufactures flooded the Indian

market. Food grain and raw material exports from India to Britain

and the rest of the world increased. But the value of British exportsto India was much higher than the value of British imports from

India. Thus Britain had a ‘trade surplus’ with India. Britain used this

surplus to balance its trade deficits with other countries – that is,with countries from which Britain was importing more than it was

selling to. This is how a multilateral settlement system works –

it allows one country’s deficit with another country to be settledby its surplus with a third country. By helping Britain balance its

deficits, India played a crucial role in the late-nineteenth-century

world economy.

Britain’s trade surplus in India also helped pay the so-called ‘home

charges’ that included private remittances home by British officials

and traders, interest payments on India’s external debt, and pensionsof British officials in India.

Surat

GoaMadrasMasulipatamHoogly

BangkokHanoiCanton

Malacca

Batavia

BantamAchehMuscatBandar AbbasBasraAleppo

Alexandria

Jedda

MachaLahoreBukhara

Yarkand TheGreatWall

Mombasa

Mozambique

Sea route

Land route

Volume of trade passing through the portRed SeaPersian Gulf

Indian OceanIndia and the Contemporary World

923 The Inter-war Economy

The First World War (1914-18) was mainly fought in Europe. But

its impact was felt around the world. Notably for our concernsin this chapter, it plunged the first half of the twentieth centuryinto a crisis that took over three decades to overcome. Duringthis period the world experienced widespread economic andpolitical instability, and another catastrophic war.

3.1 Wartime Transformations

The First World War, as you know, was fought between two powerblocs. On the one side were the Allies – Britain, France and Russia(later joined by the US); and on the opposite side were the CentralPowers – Germany, Austria-Hungary and Ottoman Turkey. Whenthe war began in August 1914, many governments thought it wouldbe over by Christmas. It lasted more than four years.

The First World War was a war like no other before. The fighting

involved the world’s leading industrial nations which nowharnessed the vast powers of modern industry to inflict the greatestpossible destruction on their enemies.

This war was thus the first modern industrial war. It saw the use

of machine guns, tanks, aircraft, chemical weapons, etc. on amassive scale. These were all increasingly products of modern large-scale industry. To fight the war, millions of soldiershad to be recruited from around the world andmoved to the frontlines on large ships and trains.

The scale of death and destruction – 9 million dead

and 20 million injured – was unthinkable before the

industrial age, without the use of industrial arms.

Most of the killed and maimed were men of

working age. These deaths and injuries reduced theable-bodied workforce in Europe. With fewernumbers within the family, household incomesdeclined after the war.

During the war, industries were restructured to

produce war-related goods. Entire societies werealso reorganised for war – as men went to battle,women stepped in to undertake jobs that earlier only

men were expected to do.

Fig. 20 – Workers in a munition factory during the First World

War.Production of armaments increased rapidly to meet war demands.93

The Making of a Global WorldThe war led to the snapping of economic links between some of

the world’s largest economic powers which were now fightingeach other to pay for them. So Britain borrowed large sumsof money from US banks as well as the US public. Thus the war

transformed the US from being an international debtor to an

international creditor. In other words, at the war’s end, the US andits citizens owned more overseas assets than foreign governmentsand citizens owned in the US.

3.2 Post-war Recovery

Post-war economic recovery proved difficult. Britain, which wasthe world’s leading economy in the pre-war period, in particularfaced a prolonged crisis. While Britain was preoccupied with war,

industries had developed in India and Japan. After the war Britain

found it difficult to recapture its earlier position of dominance inthe Indian market, and to compete with Japan internationally.Moreover, to finance war expenditures Britain had borrowed liberally

from the US. This meant that at the end of the war Britain was

burdened with huge external debts.

The war had led to an economic boom, that is, to a large increase in

demand, production and employment. When the war boom ended,production contracted and unemployment increased. At the

same time the government reduced bloated war expenditures to

bring them into line with peacetime revenues. These developmentsled to huge job losses – in 1921 one in every five British workerswas out of work. Indeed, anxiety and uncertainty about work

became an enduring part of the post-war scenario.

Many agricultural economies were also in crisis. Consider the case

of wheat producers. Before the war, eastern Europe was a majorsupplier of wheat in the world market. When this supply was

disrupted during the war, wheat production in Canada, America

and Australia expanded dramatically. But once the war was over,production in eastern Europe revived and created a glut in wheatoutput. Grain prices fell, rural incomes declined, and farmers fell

deeper into debt.

3.3 Rise of Mass Production and Consumption

In the US, recovery was quicker. We have already seen how the warhelped boost the US economy. After a short period of economicIndia and the Contemporary World

94trouble in the years after the war, the US economy resumed

its strong growth in the early 1920s.

One important feature of the US economy of the 1920s

was mass production. The move towards mass productionhad begun in the late nineteenth century, but in the 1920s itbecame a characteristic feature of industrial production inthe US. A well-known pioneer of mass production was thecar manufacturer Henry Ford. He adapted the assembly lineof a Chicago slaughterhouse (in which slaughtered animalswere picked apart by butchers as they came down a conveyorbelt) to his new car plant in Detroit. He realised that the

‘assembly line’ method would allow a faster and cheaper way

of producing vehicles. The assembly line forced workers torepeat a single task mechanically and continuously – such asfitting a particular part to the car – at a pace dictated by theconveyor belt. This was a way of increasing the output per workerby speeding up the pace of work. Standing in front of a conveyorbelt no worker could afford to delay the motions, take a break, oreven have a friendly word with a workmate. As a result, HenryFord’s cars came off the assembly line at three-minute intervals, aspeed much faster than that achieved by previous methods. The T-Model Ford was the world’s first mass-produced car.

At first workers at the Ford factory were unable to cope with the

stress of working on assembly lines in which they could not control

the pace of work. So they quit in large numbers. In desperationFord doubled the daily wage to $5 in January 1914. At the sametime he banned trade unions from operating in his plants.

Henry Ford recovered the high wage by repeatedly speeding up

the production line and forcing workers to work ever harder. Somuch so, he would soon describe his decision to double the dailywage as the ‘best cost-cutting decision’ he had ever made.

Fordist industrial practices soon spread in the US. They were also

widely copied in Europe in the 1920s. Mass production loweredcosts and prices of engineered goods. Thanks to higher wages,more workers could now afford to purchase durable consumer

goods such as cars. Car production in the US rose from 2 million in

1919 to more than 5 million in 1929. Similarly, there was a spurtin the purchase of refrigerators, washing machines, radios,gramophone players, all through a system of ‘hire purchase’ (i.e., on

Fig. 21 – T-Model automobiles lined up outside the

factory.95

The Making of a Global Worldcredit repaid in weekly or monthly instalments). The demand

for refrigerators, washing machines, etc. was also fuelled by a boomin house construction and home ownership, financed once again

by loans.

The housing and consumer boom of the 1920s created the basis of

prosperity in the US. Large investments in housing and household