Social Science (087) — AI-generated practice question

As colonial control tightened, Indian merchants faced shrinking opportunities in external trade — they were barred from trading manufactured goods with Europe and gradually edged out of the shipping business. Forced to export only raw materials like raw cotton, opium, and indigo, their earlier profits from wider trade were curtailed.

However, merchants who had accumulated capital through the China trade — like Dwarkanath Tagore in Bengal, Parsis like Dinshaw Petit and J.N. Tata in Bombay, and Marwari Seth Hukumchand — redirected that wealth into industrial enterprises inside India. Similarly, merchants who operated within India, transferring funds and financing traders, invested in factories when industrial opportunities arose.

Thus, exclusion from overseas trade acted as a push factor, redirecting entrepreneurial energy toward building cotton mills, jute mills, and iron and steel works within India — channelling accumulated commercial capital into domestic industrial investment.

Source: The Age of Industrialisation, Chapter 4, Section 4.1 — The Early Entrepreneurs

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• Examiners expect you to link the restriction of trade to industrial investment — show cause and effect clearly.
• Name specific industrialists from the passage (Tagore, Tata, Seth Hukumchand, G.D. Birla) for full marks — generic answers lose marks.
• The key argument is: blocked from external trade → capital already accumulated → reinvested in domestic industry. State this explicitly.
• Don't write about weavers or indentured labour — stay focused on merchants/industrialists.
• Around 110–120 words is ideal for 5 marks; don't pad with irrelevant colonial history.