In the early years of its development, the Indian textile industry had to face the following problems:
(i) Indian textiles had to compete with British textiles in the European and American markets.
(ii) Exporting textiles to England became very difficult due to high duties imposed on the Indian textiles.
(iii) English and European companies stopped buying Indian goods and giving advances to the weavers.
(iv) By the 1830s, as the British cotton cloth flooded the Indian markets, thousands of weavers became unemployed.

Francis Buchanan described the production of Wootz steel as follows:
(i) In a smelting furnace, iron was mixed with charcoal and put inside small clay pots
(ii) By an intricate control of furnace temperatures, the smelters produced steel ingots.
(iii) These steel ingots were then fashioned into swords with very hard and sharp edges.

The development of cotton industries in Britain affected textile producers in India due to the following factors:
(i) Competition in Foreign Markets By the beginning of the 19th century, English-made cotton textiles ousted Indian textiles from their traditional markets in Europe, Africa and America. This threw thousands of Indian weavers out of employment.
(ii) High Import Duties/Ban on Imports Exporting textiles to England became increasingly difficult due to the very high duties imposed on Indian textiles imported into Britain.
(iii) Capture of the Indian Market By the 1830s, British cotton cloth flooded Indian markets. By the 1880s, two-thirds of all cotton clothes worn by Indians were made of cloth produced in Britain.

The origins of the names of different textiles tell us about their histories. For example, (i) Muslin is a word meaning any finely woven textile. The name of this cloth is derived from Mosul (a town in Iraq), where European traders first saw fine cotton cloth from India, which was brought from India by Arab traders.
(ii) Calico is a generic name for all cotton textiles. This is derived from Calicut, a port town in Kerala, where the Portuguese first landed in India. They took back Indian cotton textiles to Europe, where these came to be called calico.
(iii) Chintz, a printed cotton cloth, is a term derived from the Hindi word chhint, a cloth with small and colourful flowery designs.

The East India Company gradually conquered different states and expanded its territory. Nawabs and rajas were forced to admit the supremacy of the Company. The requirements of weapons by the native rulers became lesser. Thus, the swords and armour making industry died with the conquest of India by the British. Imports of iron and steel from England displaced the iron and steel produced by craftspeople in India. By the late 19th century, the craft of iron smelting was in decline due to political, social and economic reasons.

(i) Agarias - a community of iron smelters were lived in this village.
(ii) In the late 19th century a series of famines devastated the dry tracts of India.

(i) In picture 1, Tanti weavers are working in the pit loom.
(ii) Women workers of the cotton factory are shown in picture 2.

The basic difference between India and Japan was that India was run by the British colonial government, while Japan was an independent country. While the colonial government in India, which wanted to expand the market for British goods, did not support Indian industrialists, the Japanese Government encouraged the growth of industries.
They did this by developing postal and telegraph services, railways and steam-powered shipping. They also imported advanced technology from the West and gave generous loans to industrialists, besides selling large industries started by the government to business families very cheaply. Thus in India, colonial domination created barriers to industrialization, while in Japan the fear of foreign conquest spurred industrialisation.