‘NCERT Solutions for Class 10 Social Science Chapter 5 The Age of Industrialisation’ PDF Quick download link is given at the bottom of this article. You can see the PDF demo, size of the PDF, page numbers, and direct download Free PDF of ‘Ncert Class 10 Social Science Chapter 5 Exercise Solution’ using the download button.
The Age of Industrialisation PDF Free Download
Chapter 5: The Age of Industrialisation
In 1900, a popular music publisher E.T. Paull produced a music book that had a picture on the cover page announcing the ‘Dawn of the Century’ (Fig. 1). As you can see from the illustration, at the center of the picture is a goddess-like figure, the angel of progress, bearing the flag of the new century.
She is gently perched on a wheel with wings, symbolizing time. Her flight is taking her into the future. Floating about, behind her, are the signs of progress: railway, camera, machines, printing press and factory.
This glorification of machines and technology is even more marked in a picture that appeared on the pages of a trade magazine over a hundred years ago (Fig. 2). It shows two magicians. The one at the top is Aladdin from the Orient who built a beautiful palace with his magic lamp.
The one at the bottom is the modern mechanic, who with his modern tools weaves a new magic: builds bridges, ships, towers and high-rise buildings.
Aladdin is shown as representing the East and the past, the mechanic stands for the West and modernity. These images offer us a triumphant account of the modern world. Within this account, the modern world is associated with rapid technological change and innovations, machines and factories, railways and steamships.
The history of industrialization thus becomes simply a story of development, and the modern age appears as a wonderful time of technological progress. These images and associations have now become part of popular imagination.
Do you not see rapid industrialization as a time of progress and modernity? Do you not think that the spread of railways and factories, and the construction of high-rise buildings and bridges is a sign of society’s development? How have these images developed? And how do we relate to these ideas? Is industrialization always based on rapid technological development? Can we today continue to glorify the continuous mechanization of all work? What has industrialization meant to people’s lives? To answer such questions we need to turn to the history of industrialization.
In this chapter we will look at this history by focusing first on Britain, the first industrial nation, and then India, where the pattern of industrial change was conditioned by colonial rule. All too often we associate industrialisation with the growth of factory industry.
When we talk of industrial production we refer to factory production. When we talk of industrial workers we mean factory workers. Histories of industrialization very often begin with the setting up of the first factories.
There is a problem with such ideas. Even before factories began to dot the landscape in England and Europe, there was large-scale industrial production for an international market. This was not based on factories. Many historians now refer to this phase of industrialization as proto-industrialization.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, merchants from the towns in Europe began moving to the countryside, supplying money to peasants and artisans, persuading them to produce for an international market. With the expansion of world trade and the acquisition of colonies in different parts of the world, the demand for goods began growing. But merchants could not expand production within towns.
This was because here urban crafts and trade guilds were powerful. These were associations of producers that trained craftspeople, maintained control over production, regulated competition and prices, and restricted the entry of new people into the trade. Rulers granted different guilds the monopoly right to produce and trade in specific products. It was therefore difficult for new merchants to set up business in towns.
So they turned to the countryside. In the countryside poor peasants and artisans began working for merchants. As you have seen in the textbook last year, this was a time when open fields were disappearing and commons were being enclosed.
Cottagers and poor peasants who had earlier depended on common lands for their survival, gathering their firewood, berries, vegetables, hay and straw, had to now look for alternative sources of income. Many had tiny plots of land which could not provide work for all members of the household. So when merchants came around and offered advances to produce goods for them, peasant households eagerly agreed.
| Author | NCERT |
| Language | English |
| No. of Pages | 24 |
| PDF Size | 1.5 MB |
| Category | Social Science |
| Source/Credits | ncert.nic.in |
NCERT Solutions Class 11 Social Science Chapter 5 The Age of Industrialisation
1. Explain the following:
- Women workers in Britain attacked the Spinning Jenny
- In the seventeenth century merchants from towns in Europe began employing peasants and artisans within the villages
- The port of Surat declined by the end of the eighteenth century
- The East India Company appointed ‘gomasthas’ to supervise weavers in India
Solution:
- James Hargreaves designed the Spinning Jenny in 1764. This machine speeded up the spinning process and reduced the demand for labour. By the use of this machine, a single worker could turn a number of spindles, and spin several threads at a time. Due to this, many weavers would lose employment. The fearful prospect of unemployment drew women workers, who depended on hand-spinning, to attack the new machines.
- World trade expanded at a very fast rate during the 17th and 18th centuries. The acquisition of colonies was also responsible for the increase in demand. The producers in the towns failed to produce the required quantity of cloth. The producers could not expand the production in the towns, because urban crafts and trade guilds were powerful. These were the associations of producers that restricted the entry of new people into the trade. The rulers granted different guilds the monopoly right to produce and the trade-in specific products.
- The European companies were gaining power by securing a variety of concessions from the local courts. It was very difficult for the Indian merchants and traders to face the competition as most of the European countries had huge resources. Some of the European companies got the monopoly rights to trade.
All this resulted in the decline of Surat Port by the end of the eighteenth century. In the last years of the seventeenth century, the gross value of trade that passed through Surat had been 16 million. By the 1740s, it had slumped to 3 million. With the passage of time, Surat and Hooghly decayed, while Bombay (Mumbai) and Calcutta (Kolkata) grew.
- The company tried to eliminate the existing traders and brokers connect with the cloth trade, and establish more direct control over the weavers. It appointed a paid servant called Gomastha to supervise weavers, collect supplies, and examine the quality of cloth.
NCERT Class 11 Social Science Textbook Chapter 5 With Answer PDF Free Download