Indian industrialists in the late nineteenth century largely avoided producing cotton fabric and instead focu…

Question

Indian industrialists in the late nineteenth century largely avoided producing cotton fabric and instead focused on spinning yarn. What two market realities made yarn a safer choice than cloth at that time, and how did the First World War eventually change this calculation?

Accepted Answer

## Model Answer Indian industrialists avoided cloth production for two reasons: first, Manchester cloth already dominated the Indian market, making competition very risky; and second, yarn was **not** a major British import into India, so there was no direct competition. Indian-spun coarse yarn was sold to handloom weavers or exported to China, giving mills a ready market. The First World War changed this. With British mills occupied with war production, Manchester imports into India fell sharply. Indian mills now had a large, uncontested home market for cloth. Factory output boomed, and after the war, Manchester never recovered its earlier position in India. *Source: The Age of Industrialisation, Chapter 4, Section 5 – The Peculiarities of Industrial Growth* --- ## Explanation Examiners expect **two specific market realities** (Manchester dominance in cloth + absence of British competition in yarn) and a **clear causal link** to WWI (British mills diverted → Indian mills filled the g…

Social Science (087) — AI-generated practice question