Look at Figs. 4 and 5. Can you see any difference in the way the two images show industrialisation? Explain your view briefly.

Imagine that you are a merchant writing back to a salesman who has been trying to persuade you to buy a new machine. Explain in your letter what you have heard and why you do not wish to invest in the new technology.

Look at Figs. 3, 7 and 11, then reread source B. Explain why many workers were opposed to the use of the Spinning Jenny.

Source B

A magistrate reported in 1790 about an incident when he was called in to protect a manufacturer’s property from being attacked by workers:

‘From the depredations of a lawless Banditti of colliers and their wives, for the wives had lost their work to spinning engines … they advanced at first with much insolence, avowing their intention of cutting to pieces the machine lately introduced in the woollen manufacture; which they suppose, if generally adopted, will lessen the demand for manual labour. The women became clamorous. The men were more open to conviction and after some expostulation were induced to desist from their purpose and return peaceably home.’

J.L. Hammond and B. Hammond, The Skilled Labourer 1760-1832, quoted in Maxine Berg, The Age of Manufactures.

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.