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.

(a) The Spinning Jenny was opposed by British women workers because it created a fear of losing jobs. It sped up the spinning process and, as a result, reduced labour demand. They had been surviving on hand spinning up until now, but the introduction of efficient and fast new machine was ready to make them jobless. Therefore, women workers in Britain attacked the Spinning Jenny.

(b) With the expansion of world trade and the acquisition of colonies in different parts of the world, the demand for goods began growing. In the seventeenth century 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. That is why the the seventeenth century merchants from towns in Europe began employing peasants and artisans within the villages to meet the international demands.

(c) Before industrialisation, Indian silk and cotton goods dominated the international market in textiles. Surat on Gujarat coast was one of the main pre-colonial ports through which a vibrant sea trade operated. By the 1750s, the European companies gradually gained power by securing a variety of concessions from local courts, then the monopoly rights to trade. This resulted in a decline of the old ports of Surat. Exports from these ports of Surat and Hooghly fell dramatically, the credit that had financed the earlier trade began drying up, and the local bankers slowly went bankrupt. In the last years of the seventeenth century, the gross value of trade that passed through Surat had been Rs 16 million. By the 1740s it had slumped to Rs 3 million.

(d) The East India Company proceeded to develop a system of management and control that would eliminate competition, control costs, and ensure regular supplies of cotton and silk goods. Therefore, the Company tried to eliminate the existing traders and brokers connected with the cloth trade, and established a more direct control over the weaver. It appointed a paid servant called the gomasthas to supervise weavers, collect supplies, and examine the quality of cloth. The new gomasthas were outsiders, with no long-term social link with the village. They acted arrogantly, marched into villages with sepoys and peons, and punished weavers for delays in supply – often beating and flogging them.