Question

what happened to weaving industry in 19th century?

Answer 1

The weaving industry faced a series of issues in the 19th century:

1. At first, English-made cotton textiles totally replaced Indian goods from their traditional markets in Africa, America and Europe. This resulted in many weavers in India being unemployed. The weavers in Bengal were the worst hit.

2. Not only did the English and the Europeans stop buying Indian goods, their agents resorted to stopping lending advances to weavers so to secure supplies.

3. By the 1830s, Indian markets got flooded with the cotton clothes manufactured by the British. This followed two-thirds of the cotton clothes worn by Indians to be made out of the cotton cloth produced in Britain in the 1880s.

All this not just affected the specialist weavers but also spinners, with many rural women so spinning cotton thread being rendered jobless.