The Impact of British Industrial Revolution on a Bengal Industry

Abstract

Bengal was probably the world’s most famous producer of cotton textile for a long period of time. The manufacture of cotton goods was found in almost every village in Bengal. Numerous kinds of clothes were manufactured by the weavers of Bengal which were differentiated by various names according to the fabrics and places where they were manufactured. The cotton manufactures of Bengal can be divided into two broad categories viz., muslins and calicoes. Muslins were thinner in texture and lighter in weight than the calicoes.During the early trade of European with India by the long sea route, the calicoes and fine muslins of Bengal were well accepted by the people of the different parts of the World. Bengal textile products of different verities flooded into the European market in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries which climbed the peak in the mid eighteenth century. From the beginning of the eighteenth century, there were two main production centers of cotton goods in the Global context i.e. Bengal at one end and England at the other. The Bengal cotton textile industry was running under severe competition with that of England as the latter progressed rapidly after the Industrial Revolution and the English industry could able to win over Bengal’s competitive edge by the turn of eighteenth century. Since then the prosperous industry of Bengal started to decay and in the first half of nineteenth century its position reached at a gloomy state. The cause(s) of the decay of the Bengal industry are still open to debate. To clarify the disputes, this article seeks to show how far the British Industrial revolution was responsible for the decay of the prosperous cotton industry of Bengal.