Bombay cotton mills
Also called: First cotton mill in Bombay · Topic: Colonial Economy: Land Revenue, Drain, Deindustrialisation · NCERT: Class 10, Ch 4 "The Age of Industrialisation"
Meaning
India's modern cotton mill industry began in Bombay. The first cotton mill was set up there in 1854 and started production in 1856. By 1862 Bombay had four mills with 94,000 spindles and 2,150 looms. Mills later came up in Kanpur (Elgin Mill, 1860s), Ahmedabad and Madras (1874). At first these mills made coarse yarn, which is thick, rough thread. They sold it to Indian handloom weavers and to China, so they did not have to compete with Manchester cloth.
Example
From 1906, Chinese and Japanese mills took over the China yarn market, so Bombay mills switched from yarn to cloth. During the First World War, Manchester was busy with war production. Indian mills then supplied the home market and made army goods such as uniform cloth and tents. In 1911, more than half of Bombay's cotton-mill workers came from Ratnagiri district.
Don't confuse with
- First jute mill (Bengal, 1855): jute mills grew up around Calcutta, not Bombay. The first Indian-owned jute mill was Seth Hukumchand's, set up in Calcutta in 1917.
Related concepts
- Dwarkanath Tagore
- Opium trade with China
- Jamsetji Tata
- Tata Iron and Steel Company
- Managing agency
- Jobber
- Cotton excise duty 1896
- Discriminating protection