NCERT Solutions for Class 10 Social Science (India and the Contemporary World II) Chapter 4: The Age of Industrialisation
These Class 10 History Chapter 4 solutions cover The Age of Industrialisation from India and the Contemporary World – II, the NCERT textbook for the 2026–27 session. The chapter traces the history of industrialisation by looking first at Britain, the first industrial nation, and then at India, where industrial change was shaped by colonial rule. It explains proto-industrialisation, the coming of the factory, the slow pace of industrial change, the choice between hand labour and steam power, the decline of Indian weavers under the East India Company, the rise of early Indian entrepreneurs, and how a market for goods was created through advertisements. Below you get step-by-step answers to every “Write in brief” and “Discuss” question, plus key terms, extra practice, MCQs, Assertion–Reason and FAQs.
Class: 10Subject: Social Science (History)Book: India and the Contemporary World – IIChapter: 4Title: The Age of IndustrialisationSession: 2026–27
Chapter 4, The Age of Industrialisation, questions the popular idea that industrialisation was simply a story of rapid progress through factories and machines. Long before factories appeared, there was large-scale production for an international market in the countryside — a phase historians call proto-industrialisation, controlled by merchants and worked by peasant families. The first factories in England came up in the 1730s and multiplied after the late eighteenth century, with cotton and then iron and steel leading the way. Yet technological change was slow: new machines were costly and unreliable, hand labour stayed important, and the typical mid-nineteenth-century worker was still a traditional craftsperson. In India, fine textiles once dominated world markets, but after the East India Company gained power it controlled weavers through gomasthas and the advance system, while cheap Manchester imports ruined the handloom export and home markets. From 1854 Indian factories grew, set up by entrepreneurs who had earned wealth in the China and export trade, but they faced competition from European Managing Agencies. The First World War finally gave Indian industry a boom. The chapter shows that hand technology and small-scale production remained central to the industrial age.
Key Terms & Concepts
Proto-industrialisation: the phase of large-scale industrial production for an international market that took place before factories, organised by merchants and carried out by peasants and artisans within their village households.
Guilds: powerful urban associations of producers that trained craftspeople, controlled production, regulated competition and prices, and restricted the entry of new traders — which is why merchants moved to the countryside.
Stapler / Fuller / Carding: a stapler sorts wool according to its fibre; a fuller gathers (fulls) cloth by pleating; carding is the process of preparing fibres such as cotton or wool before spinning.
Spinning Jenny: a machine devised by James Hargreaves in 1764 that speeded up spinning — by turning one wheel a worker could set many spindles in motion — and so reduced the demand for labour.
Fly shuttle: a mechanical device moved by ropes and pulleys that places the weft threads into the warp, allowing weavers to operate large looms and weave wider cloth faster.
Gomastha: a paid servant appointed by the East India Company to supervise weavers, collect supplies and check the quality of cloth — an outsider who often treated weavers harshly.
System of advances: loans given to weavers to buy raw material; in return they had to hand all their cloth to the gomastha and could not sell to any other buyer, which tied them to the Company.
Jobber: an old and trusted worker employed by industrialists to recruit new workers (often from his own village), who gained authority and began demanding money and gifts.
European Managing Agencies: firms such as Bird Heiglers & Co., Andrew Yule and Jardine Skinner & Co. that mobilised capital and controlled much of Indian industry, often with Indian financiers providing capital but Europeans taking the decisions.
Orient: the countries to the east of the Mediterranean, usually Asia — a term arising from a western viewpoint that saw the region as pre-modern, traditional and mysterious.
“Write in brief” & “Discuss” — Full Solutions
All questions below are reproduced verbatim from the NCERT textbook’s end-of-chapter exercises (“Write in brief”, “Discuss” and “Project work”). Answers are original, written in exam-ready style.
Write in brief
1. Explain the following:
a) Women workers in Britain attacked the Spinning Jenny.b) In the seventeenth century merchants from towns in Europe began employing peasants and artisans within the villages.c) The port of Surat declined by the end of the eighteenth century.d) The East India Company appointed gomasthas to supervise weavers in India.
ANSWERa) The Spinning Jenny speeded up the spinning process so that one worker could spin several threads at once, sharply reducing the need for spinners. In the woollen industry many women had survived on hand spinning, and they feared that the new machine would take away their livelihood. With unemployment threatening them, women workers attacked and tried to destroy the Spinning Jenny, and this conflict over its introduction continued for a long time.b) With the expansion of world trade and the acquisition of colonies, the demand for goods grew, but merchants could not expand production inside the towns because urban crafts and trade guilds were powerful — they controlled production and prices and restricted the entry of new traders. So merchants turned to the countryside, where poor peasants and artisans, who had lost access to common lands due to enclosures and had tiny plots, eagerly accepted the advances offered. This let them stay in the countryside, use their family labour fully, and add to their shrinking income from cultivation.c) Surat had been a flourishing port linking India to the Gulf and Red Sea ports. But from the 1750s the network of Indian merchants began breaking down as European companies gained power, securing concessions and then monopoly rights to trade. Trade shifted to the new colonial ports of Bombay and Calcutta, controlled by European companies and carried in European ships. Exports through Surat fell dramatically and the credit that financed its trade dried up — its trade slumped from Rs 16 million in the late seventeenth century to Rs 3 million by the 1740s — so the port declined by the end of the eighteenth century.d) Once the East India Company established political power, it wanted a monopoly over trade and a regular supply of cheap, good-quality cloth. To eliminate the existing traders and brokers and gain direct control over weavers, it appointed a paid servant called the gomastha. The gomastha supervised the weavers, collected the supplies and examined the quality of the cloth, ensuring that weavers who had taken advances sold their cloth only to the Company.
2. Write True or False against each statement:
a) At the end of the nineteenth century, 80 per cent of the total workforce in Europe was employed in the technologically advanced industrial sector.b) The international market for fine textiles was dominated by India till the eighteenth century.c) The American Civil War resulted in the reduction of cotton exports from India.d) The introduction of the fly shuttle enabled handloom workers to improve their productivity.
ANSWERa) False. Even at the end of the nineteenth century, less than 20 per cent of the total workforce was employed in technologically advanced industrial sectors; the rest worked in traditional and domestic units.b) True. Before the age of machine industries, silk and cotton goods from India dominated the international market in textiles, with the finer varieties coming mainly from India.c) False. When the American Civil War cut off cotton supplies from the US, Britain turned to India, so raw cotton exports from India actually increased and prices shot up — they did not reduce.d) True. The fly shuttle increased productivity per worker, speeded up production and let weavers operate larger looms, helping them improve their productivity and compete with the mills.
3. Explain what is meant by proto-industrialisation.
ANSWERProto-industrialisation is the name many historians give to the early phase of industrialisation that took place before the coming of factories, when there was already large-scale industrial production for an international market that was not based on factories.In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, merchants from European towns moved to the countryside and supplied money to peasants and artisans, persuading them to produce goods for the world market. They did this because powerful urban guilds prevented them from expanding production within the towns. The work was done in village households by family labour, while the merchants who controlled the system were based in the towns.A close relationship developed between town and countryside: for example, a merchant clothier in England bought wool from a stapler and passed it through spinners, weavers, fullers and dyers, with the finishing done in London (a ‘finishing centre’) before export. At each stage 20–25 workers were employed per merchant, so each clothier controlled hundreds of producers. Proto-industrial income supplemented the peasants’ shrinking earnings from cultivation.
Discuss
1. Why did some industrialists in nineteenth-century Europe prefer hand labour over machines?
ANSWERIn Victorian Britain there was no shortage of human labour. Poor peasants and vagrants moved to the cities in large numbers, so labour was plentiful and wages were low. Industrialists therefore had no problem of labour shortage or high wage costs and did not want to introduce expensive machines that replaced labour.In many industries the demand for labour was seasonal — gas works and breweries were busy in the cold months, bookbinders and printers before Christmas, and ship-repair in winter. In such industries it made more sense to hire hand labour only for the season rather than invest in machines.Machines produced uniform, standardised goods, but the market often demanded goods with intricate designs and specific shapes — for instance, 500 varieties of hammers and 45 kinds of axes were made in mid-nineteenth-century Britain — which needed human skill, not machines. Moreover, the upper classes preferred handmade products, which symbolised refinement and class and were better finished. For all these reasons many industrialists preferred hand labour over machines.
2. How did the East India Company procure regular supplies of cotton and silk textiles from Indian weavers?
ANSWERBefore it gained political power, the Company found it hard to ensure a regular supply, because the French, Dutch, Portuguese and local traders all competed for cloth, so weavers and supply merchants could bargain and sell to the best buyer.Once the East India Company established political power after the 1760s, it asserted a monopoly right to trade and developed a system to eliminate competition, control costs and ensure regular supplies. First, it tried to eliminate the existing traders and brokers and establish direct control over the weaver by appointing a paid servant called the gomastha to supervise weavers, collect supplies and check quality.Second, it stopped Company weavers from dealing with other buyers through the system of advances: once an order was placed, weavers were given loans to buy raw material, and those who took the loans had to hand over all their cloth to the gomastha and could not sell it to any other trader. As loans flowed in and demand grew, weavers eagerly took the advances, leased out their land and devoted their whole family’s labour to weaving — which tied them firmly to the Company.
3. Imagine that you have been asked to write an article for an encyclopaedia on Britain and the history of cotton. Write your piece using information from the entire chapter.
ANSWERBritain and the History of Cotton. Cotton was the first symbol of the new industrial era in Britain. Even before factories, there was proto-industrial production in the countryside, where merchants gave advances to peasant families to spin and weave for an international market.From 1760 Britain’s raw-cotton imports rose sharply — from 2.5 million pounds in 1760 to 22 million pounds by 1787 — as a series of eighteenth-century inventions improved carding, twisting and spinning and raised each worker’s output. Richard Arkwright created the cotton mill, bringing all the processes under one roof, allowing closer supervision, quality control and regulation of labour. By the early nineteenth century imposing cotton mills dominated the English landscape.Cotton was the leading sector of industrialisation up to the 1840s, after which iron and steel led the way. Yet change was slow: machines like the Spinning Jenny and James Watt’s steam engine (patented 1781) spread gradually because they were costly and unreliable, and at the start of the nineteenth century there were only about 321 steam engines in all of England. Much cotton cloth was still produced by hand outside factories.Britain also depended on its colonies: Manchester cloth flooded India, ruining Indian weavers, while India supplied raw cotton, especially during the American Civil War. After the First World War, however, Britain could not modernise or compete with the US, Germany and Japan, its cotton production collapsed, and cotton-cloth exports fell dramatically. Thus the story of British cotton is one of early dominance built on machines, colonies and hand labour together, followed by decline.
4. Why did industrial production in India increase during the First World War?
ANSWERThe First World War created a dramatically new situation for Indian industry. British mills became busy with war production to meet the needs of the army, so Manchester imports into India declined. This suddenly gave Indian mills a vast home market to supply.As the war went on, Indian factories were called upon to supply war needs — jute bags, cloth for army uniforms, tents, leather boots, horse and mule saddles and many other items. To meet this demand, new factories were set up and old ones ran multiple shifts, many new workers were employed and everyone worked longer hours.As a result industrial production boomed over the war years. After the war Manchester could never recapture its old position in the Indian market, and local industrialists gradually consolidated their position by substituting foreign manufactures and capturing the home market.
Project work
Select any one industry in your region and find out its history. How has the technology changed? Where do the workers come from? How are the products advertised and marketed? Try and talk to the employers and some workers to get their views about the industry’s history.
HOW TO DO THIS PROJECTThis is a field-based activity, so the answer depends on the industry you choose — for example a textile mill, a brick kiln, a food-processing unit, a pottery or a furniture workshop near you.History & technology: find out when the industry started, what it first produced and how it grew; note how production changed from hand tools to machines or power-driven equipment, and what new technology was added over time.Workers: ask where the workers come from (nearby villages, other states), whether they are seasonal or permanent, how they were recruited (a jobber/contractor?), and what hours and wages they get.Advertising & marketing: see how the products are sold — labels, brand names, calendars, hoardings, newspaper ads, online platforms — and how the company persuades buyers. Finally, record the different views of employers and workers about the industry’s history, and present your findings as a short illustrated report.
Extra Practice Questions
Short Answer Type Questions
Q1. What were guilds and how did they affect merchants in the towns?
ANSWERGuilds were powerful associations of urban producers that trained craftspeople, maintained control over production, regulated competition and prices, and restricted the entry of new people into a trade. Rulers also granted guilds the monopoly right to produce and trade in specific products. This made it difficult for new merchants to set up business in the towns, so they turned to the countryside to organise production.
Q2. Why was the spread of the steam engine slow in England?
ANSWERJames Watt improved the steam engine and patented it in 1781, and his friend Mathew Boulton manufactured it, but for years there were no buyers. New technology was expensive, the machines often broke down and were costly to repair, and they were not as effective as their makers claimed. So at the beginning of the nineteenth century there were no more than 321 steam engines in all of England, mostly in cotton, wool, mining and iron works.
Q3. Who was a jobber and what role did he play in Indian factories?
ANSWERA jobber was an old and trusted worker employed by industrialists to recruit new workers for the mills. He brought people from his own village, ensured them jobs, helped them settle in the city and lent them money in times of crisis. Because he controlled entry into the mills, the jobber became a person of authority and power and began demanding money and gifts in return for his favours.
Q4. How did Manchester imports affect Indian weavers in the early nineteenth century?
ANSWERCheap machine-made cotton goods from Manchester flooded the Indian market. By 1850 cotton piece-goods made up over 31 per cent of India’s imports, and over 50 per cent by the 1870s. Indian weavers faced two problems at once: their export market collapsed and their home market shrank, since they could not compete with the low-cost imports. Reports from most weaving regions told stories of decline and desolation.
Q5. From where did the early Indian industrialists accumulate their capital?
ANSWERMany early industrialists made their fortunes in trade before turning to industry. Businessmen like Dwarkanath Tagore in Bengal and Parsis like Dinshaw Petit and Jamsetjee Nusserwanjee Tata in Bombay earned wealth from the China trade (opium exports and tea) and from raw-cotton shipments to England. Others, such as Seth Hukumchand and the Birlas, also traded with China, while some merchants accumulated capital through internal trade, banking and financing within India.
Long Answer Type Questions
Q1. Describe the conditions that made hand labour cheap and abundant in Victorian Britain and how this affected the lives of workers.
ANSWERIn Victorian Britain there was no shortage of labour because poor peasants and vagrants tramped to the cities in large numbers in search of jobs. With plenty of workers, wages stayed low, and industrialists had no need to invest in costly machines. But the abundance of labour made workers’ lives hard. Getting a job depended on networks of friendship and kinship — those without connections waited for weeks, sleeping under bridges, in night refuges or in casual wards run by the Poor Law authorities. Many industries were seasonal, so after the busy season the poor were back on the streets with little work until the mid-nineteenth century. Although wages rose somewhat in the early nineteenth century, real wages fell during the Napoleonic War when prices rose, and income depended on the number of days of work, not just the wage rate. At the best of times about 10 per cent of the urban population was extremely poor, and in slumps like the 1830s unemployment rose to between 35 and 75 per cent in different regions. Fear of unemployment also made workers hostile to new machines like the Spinning Jenny. Only after the 1840s did expanding building and transport work open up greater employment.
Q2. Trace the decline of Indian textile exports and the ruin of Indian weavers in the nineteenth century.
ANSWERFor centuries Indian silk and cotton goods dominated world textile markets, with the finest cottons coming from India. But this changed in the nineteenth century. As cotton industries developed in England, British industrialists pressed their government to impose import duties so that Manchester goods could sell without competition, and persuaded the East India Company to sell British cloth in India too. Indian textile exports fell sharply — piece-goods were 33 per cent of India’s exports in 1811–12 but only 3 per cent by 1850–51. At the same time, cheap Manchester imports flooded the Indian home market, rising to over 50 per cent of imports by the 1870s, so weavers’ export and home markets both collapsed. In the 1860s, when the American Civil War cut off US cotton, Britain bought raw cotton from India, prices shot up, and Indian weavers were starved of cheap raw cotton. Finally, from the late nineteenth century, Indian factories began flooding the market with machine-made goods. Crushed between these forces, many weavers fell into poverty, deserted their villages or took to agricultural labour, though some who wove specialised or finer cloth survived.
Q3. How were markets created for new industrial goods, and what role did advertisements play in India?
ANSWERWhen new products are made, people have to be persuaded to buy them, and advertisements help create new consumers by making goods appear desirable and necessary. From the very beginning of the industrial age, advertisements expanded markets and shaped a new consumer culture. When Manchester industrialists sold cloth in India, they put labels on the cloth bundles to show the place of manufacture and the company’s name; the words ‘MADE IN MANCHESTER’ were meant to assure buyers of quality. Labels were also beautifully illustrated — images of Indian gods and goddesses such as Krishna, Lakshmi and Saraswati gave the goods a divine approval and made foreign goods feel familiar, while figures of emperors and nawabs suggested royal quality. By the late nineteenth century manufacturers printed calendars to popularise products; unlike newspapers, calendars could be used even by people who could not read and were hung in tea shops, homes and offices, so the advertisements were seen day after day. When Indian manufacturers advertised, the message was clearly nationalist: if you care for the nation, buy Indian-made goods — advertisements thus became a vehicle of the swadeshi message.
MCQs & Assertion–Reason
1. The phase of large-scale industrial production for an international market before factories is called:
(a) proto-industrialisation (b) deindustrialisation (c) urbanisation (d) the factory system
2. The Spinning Jenny was devised in 1764 by:
(a) Richard Arkwright (b) James Watt (c) James Hargreaves (d) Mathew Boulton
3. Who created the cotton mill that brought all production processes under one roof?
(a) James Hargreaves (b) Richard Arkwright (c) Henry Patullo (d) E.T. Paull
4. The paid servant appointed by the East India Company to supervise weavers was the:
(a) jobber (b) stapler (c) gomastha (d) sepoy
5. The first cotton mill in Bombay came up in:
(a) 1817 (b) 1854 (c) 1874 (d) 1917
6. James Watt patented his improved steam engine in:
(a) 1764 (b) 1781 (c) 1801 (d) 1730
7. The value of Indian piece-goods exports fell from 33 per cent of India’s exports in 1811–12 to about what by 1850–51?
(a) 50 per cent (b) 31 per cent (c) 3 per cent (d) 20 per cent
8. Who set up the first iron and steel works in India at Jamshedpur in 1912?
10. Indian industrial production increased during the First World War mainly because:
(a) new machines were invented in India (b) Manchester imports declined and Indian mills supplied war needs (c) guilds were abolished (d) the swadeshi movement ended
For each Assertion–Reason question, choose: (A) Both true and the Reason correctly explains the Assertion; (B) Both true but the Reason is not the correct explanation; (C) Assertion true, Reason false; (D) Assertion false, Reason true.
A-R 1. Assertion: Women workers in Britain attacked the Spinning Jenny.
Reason: The Spinning Jenny reduced the demand for hand spinning and threatened the livelihood of women spinners.
A-R 2. Assertion: Many industrialists in nineteenth-century Britain preferred hand labour to machines.
Reason: Labour was abundant and cheap, and demand in many industries was seasonal or for specialised goods.
A-R 3. Assertion: The East India Company introduced the system of advances to weavers.
Reason: The advances allowed weavers to bargain freely and sell their cloth to any trader.
A-R 4. Assertion: The port of Surat declined by the end of the eighteenth century.
Reason: Trade shifted to the colonial ports of Bombay and Calcutta controlled by European companies.
A-R 5. Assertion: Indian piece-goods exports collapsed in the nineteenth century.
Reason: India was unable to produce any cotton cloth after the East India Company gained power.
Answer key: 1-(A), 2-(A), 3-(C), 4-(A), 5-(C).
Exam Tips & Common Mistakes
How to score full marks in this chapter
Learn the key definitions exactly — proto-industrialisation, gomastha, system of advances, jobber, guilds, Spinning Jenny and fly shuttle — as one-mark and source questions are often built on them. Use the textbook’s own figures to add weight: raw-cotton imports rising from 2.5 to 22 million pounds (1760–1787), only 321 steam engines around 1800, piece-goods falling from 33% to 3% of exports, the first Bombay cotton mill of 1854, and the 1912 Tata steel works. For “explain the following” questions, give a clear cause-and-effect answer in 3–4 lines each. Always connect Indian industrialisation to colonial rule and to the First World War boom.
Common mistakes to avoid
Confusing the Spinning Jenny (Hargreaves, spinning) with the fly shuttle (weaving) and the cotton mill (Arkwright).
Writing that less than 20% of the workforce was in advanced industry as “80%” — the statement in Q2(a) is False.
Saying the American Civil War reduced India’s cotton exports — it actually increased raw-cotton exports from India.
Mixing up the gomastha (Company supervisor of weavers in India) with the jobber (recruiter of mill workers).
Thinking industrialisation was only about factories — hand labour and small-scale production stayed important throughout.
Forgetting to give dates and figures in long answers, which are easy marks in this chapter.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Chapter 4 of Class 10 History (The Age of Industrialisation) about?
The chapter traces the history of industrialisation in Britain and then in colonial India. It explains proto-industrialisation, the coming of the factory, the slow pace of industrial change, the choice between hand labour and steam power, the decline of Indian weavers under the East India Company, the rise of early Indian entrepreneurs, the boom during the First World War, and how markets for goods were created through advertisements.
What is proto-industrialisation in simple words?
Proto-industrialisation is the early phase of industrial production for an international market that happened before factories. Merchants from European towns supplied money to peasants and artisans in the countryside to produce goods, because powerful urban guilds prevented them from expanding production in the towns. The work was done in village households by family labour while merchants controlled the trade.
What are the exercise headings for Class 10 History Chapter 4?
The end-of-chapter exercises in The Age of Industrialisation are headed “Write in brief” (Q1 with parts a–d, a True/False set, and a question on proto-industrialisation), “Discuss” (four questions), and “Project work”. All of them are answered step by step on this page.
