Unit 1 Ch 4 : The Age of Industrialisation — Social Studies STD 10 — Question

As cotton industries developed in England, industrial groups began worrying about imports from other countries. They pressurized the government to impose import duties on cotton textiles so that Manchester goods could sell in Britain without facing any competition from outside. At the same time industrialists persuaded the East India Company to sell British manufactures in Indian markets as well. Exports of British cotton goods increased dramatically in the early nineteenth century. At the end of the eighteenth century there had been virtually no import of cotton piece-goods into India. But by 1850 cotton piece-goods constituted over 31 percent of the value of Indian imports, and by the 1870s this figure was over 50 percent.