PRODUCTION AND OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT Vol. 10, No. 1, Spring 2001 Printed in U.S.A.

HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY, MANUFACTURING, AND THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION: AN ALTERNATE PERSPECTIVE ON SCHMENNERS HYPOTHESES
KALYAN SINGHAL Merrick School of Business, University of Baltimore, 1420 North Charles Street, Baltimore 21201, USA. Email: Ksinghal@ubmail.ubalt.edu
Two simultaneous developments took place during the so-called Industrial Revolution (17601830): the industrialization of Britain and other countries in Europe and the deindustrialization of a number of non-European countries, including India. I identify international relations as a major driver of the three components demand, innovations, and capital formation of the Industrial Revolution. I also offer an alternate perspective on hypotheses proposed by Schmenner in the preceding article in this issue. (BRITAIN, BUSINESS HISTORY, ECONOMIC HISTORY, HISTORY OF MANUFACTURING, HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY, INDIA, INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION)

1. Introduction In a recent paper, Schmenner (2001) exhorts the academic community in operations management to look at the history of manufacturing and ferret out the generalizations that endure and that could be expected to persist well into the future. He makes several observations regarding the drivers of the Industrial Revolution that began with and was led by cotton textile manufacturing. I offer an alternate perspective on his hypotheses. 2. Drivers of the Industrial Revolution (1760 1830) According to Bairochs (1982) estimates, the relative shares (in percentages) of preindustrial world manufacturing output in 1750 were as follows: China (32.8), India (24.5), Europe, excluding Britain (21.3), Britain (1.9), United States (0.1), Japan (3.8), and rest of the world (15.6). India was the world leader in cotton textile manufacturing on four dimensions: cost, quality, variety, and volume and it exported about half of its output. The major focus of this paper is Britain and India, partly because of Indias position in manufacturing and export of manufactured goods, and partly because Indias military occupation by the British played a major role in the Industrial Revolution in Britain and
* Received August 2000; revisions received January and March 2001; accepted by Robert H. Hayes of Harvard University after two revisions. 97 1059-1478/01/1001/097$1.25
Copyright 2001, Production and Operations Management Society

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in the deindustrialization of India. For a more detailed coverage of these issues, see Singhal (2001). Early Drivers In the late 17th century and early 18th century, the triangular trade involving slaves from Africa, sugar from the Caribbean islands plantations employing those slaves, and food and manufactured goods from Britain provided a number of benets to Britain. It stimulated both agriculture and industry, increased wages and income, promoted the division of labor, encouraged the invention of labor-saving devices, and provided indirect capital for manufacturing (Landes 1998, p. 120 and Zahedieh 1994). The contribution of slavery to Britains Industrial Revolution has been widely documented, and researchers differ only on its magnitude (Williams 1944 and Solow and Engerman 1987). Drivers of Innovations in Cotton Textile Manufacturing By the early 17th century, India had advanced pre-industrial cotton manufacturing that relied on a number of mechanical devices, advanced dye technology, and elaborate division of labor among specialized craftspeople, sometimes located in different geographic regions (Baber 1996, pp. 56 57; Pelsaert 1628; and Roy 1978). During the later part of the 17th century, Indian cotton fabrics became very popular among all social classes in Britain, and they were in great demand (Thomas 1926). As a result, Britains weavers of silk and wool felt threatened and rioted. In 1701, Britain put a partial ban on Indian textiles. It provided a stimulus to nishing in Britain, and also stimulated the beginnings of English cotton manufacturing using Indian cotton yarns. In 1721, Britain banned cotton textiles of every description, including Indian calicoes, which provided a stimulus to cotton-linen mixes while sheltering them from superior Indian fabrics (Lemire 1991). After the ban on Indian fabrics, the continued taste and demand for them constituted one of the major factors in the stimulation of manufacturing of cotton fabrics in Britain and led to a succession of inventions (Baber 1996, p. 117): Kays y shuttle for weaving in the 1730s; Hargraves spinning jenny in 1766, which enabled a spinner to spin several cotton threads simultaneously; Arkwrights water frame in 1768, which combined rollers and spindles for spinning; and Cromptons mule in 1769, which was a cross between the jenny and the water frame. Drivers of Capital Remarkably, the Industrial Revolution in Britain began around the time Britain had conquered a substantial part of the Indian territory of Bengal in 1757. Adams (1918, p. 254) notes that soon after the Bengal plunder began to arrive in London, and the effect appears to have been instantaneous, for all authorities agree that the industrial revolution, the event which divided the nineteenth century from all antecedent time, began with the year 1760. Landes (1998, p. 161) estimates that the conquerors collected and remitted to Britain about one billion dollars soon after their victory. Similarly, vast sums were also collected and remitted to Britain by British ofcers and agents. The British commander alone collected about 200 million dollars. Following Landes method, I calculated these gures by converting the then prevailing wage of a skilled worker into the equivalent 1998 wage. Around 1760, about half of Indias agriculture output was surplus (Landes 1998, p. 158). India had an extensive system of both large- and small-scale irrigation (Habib 1979 and Pyke 1747). The British followed a deliberate policy of neglecting the maintenance of existing irrigation networks and imposed heavy land taxation of about 50 percent of agriculture output. They used various forms of torture, violence, and imprisonment to collect taxes (Dutt 1960, pp. 54 55; Kinnaird 1854, p. 9; and Levkovsky 1972, p. 16). Towards the end of the 18th century, India became the chief source of supply for indigo, a dyeing material, for the

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British textile industry. The British owners of indigo plantations used force, personal oppression, extortion, and imprisonment to make cultivators produce at prices much less than remunerative (Buchanan 1934, pp. 3553). A major portion of the agriculture products collected through heavy taxation and slaverylike employment on indigo plantations was exported, and the bulk of the revenue was remitted to Britain, providing free capital for the Industrial Revolution. The opportunity costs to India for this transfer of resources were many times higher. And, human costs were beyond measure. The British continued to export large quantities of food from India during the periods of droughts, and thus converting them to severe famines (Ambirajan 1978, p. 86 and Lancaster 1990, p. 412). Tens of millions of people died, and most of the living barely survived during a number of severe famines between 1770 and 1830 (Baber 1996 and Dutt 1960). India had no severe famines before the British came in 1757 or after they left in 1947. During the entire period of the Industrial Revolution, it was British policy, explicitly based on Adam Smiths advice, to provide no relief during famines (Ambirajan 1978, pp. 59 100 and Smith 1937, p. 493). Drivers of Demand The export of cotton textiles from India to Britain was practically eliminated by a combination of ban and heavy duty. Because of the British military power, there was no reciprocal duty on import of British textiles to India, which reached 51 million yards in 1830 driving out many of the traditional domestic producers in the process (Kennedy 1987, p.148). In 1850, when 25 percent of Britain cotton fabrics went to India, the production of cotton fabrics provided jobs for one-eighth of Britains population and represented one-twelfth of its national income (Levkovsky 1972, p. 32). 3. On Schmenners Hypotheses Science Science was not a major contributor to the Industrial Revolution (Landes 1998, p. 343). The technology of textile manufacturing was simple and it required little scientic knowledge or technical skill beyond the scope of a practical mechanic of the early eighteenth century (Hobsbawm 1999, p. 37). These observations provide an alternate perspective on Schmenners suggestion that with cotton, there was a marriage of huge demand to increasingly effective manufacture, with a succession of scientically-based inventions to help the process become faster and better. . .. The only science related issue during the formative years of the Industrial Revolution was the science of permanent dyes. One of the reasons for the popularity of Indian textiles was the Indian innovation of permanent dyes that could withstand repeated washing. During the 1780s, British textile manufacturers were unsuccessfully attempting to develop similar techniques (Baber 1996, p. 158 and Jones 1799). China, India, and the Textile Industry Although Schmenner notes that China and India are only now industrializing, and arguably, in ts and starts, between 1980 and 1998 (or for that matter between 1965 and 1998 if one also includes the earlier 15 years when the economies of China and India were less liberal), China and India grew faster than any of the remaining eight of the worlds 10 largest economies in terms of purchasing power parity (World Banks annual reports and Economist May 13, 2000, p. 106). The 10 economies in order of their purchasing power parity-based GNP are the United States, China, Japan, India, Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Brazil, and Russia. The Indian economy during this period grew at more than twice the rate of the British economy. The Chinese economy grew even faster. Both the Chinese and the Indian economies have been recession-proof during the last two decades. According to a

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forecast by the Economist (April 28, 2001, p. 110), the Chinese and the Indian economies will grow faster in 2001 and 2002 than any of the remaining eight largest economies or any of the so-called Asian tigers (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan). As regards the textile industry that launched and nourished the Industrial Revolution, China and India now rank number one and three. Although the United States, Japan, and Italy appear on the list of the top 10 textile producers, Britain does not (Economist, June 20, 1998, pp. 118). Equality According to Schmenner, it helped that Britain was a nation . . . characterized by equality. Let us look at the evidence for economic and political equalities. In 1688, 40 percent of the population at the bottom received only 10 percent of aggregate income, whereas 20 percent of the population at the top received 60 percent of the income (Rubinstein 1986, p. 61). The principle of one man (or woman), one vote became a reality only in 1948 (Rubinstein 1986 pp. 26 27). The creation of the working class for the Industrial Revolution was a long and painful experience (Thompson 1975). When power machinery was employed, the workers in the cottage industry were replaced by children, often conscripted (bought) from poorhouses, and women, especially the young unmarrieds (Landes 1998, p. 210). The children worked 13 hours a day (Galbraith 1987, p. 86) and were subject to corporal punishment (Atack and Passell 1994, p. 338). This did not have to happen if there was any sense of equality. Time On the role of time, Schmenner notes, Furthermore, the Judeo- Christian sense of time is a linear one. Time is progressive. India did not think in this way. In Hindu thought, time was cyclical, returning to earlier stages and starting anew. In China, time was the province of the emperor. However, in the cyclic theory, time was not cyclic, the happenings during a cycle were; and each cycle lasted hundreds of thousands or millions of years (Abdi 1999, p. 103). The theory clearly had nothing to do with day-to-day, year-to-year, or even decade-to-decade life. India has had astronomical observatories for more than two millennia (Barker 1777, Beveridge 1922, Burrow 1783, Pearse 1783, and Playfair 1790) and the least count in observations was one ghari, a time period of the order of one second (Baber 1996, p. 83). As regards China, Temple (1986, p. 9) notes that the Chinese who were awestruck by the European clocks had forgotten that it was they (Chinese) who had invented mechanical clocks in the rst place. Landes (1998, p. 155) points out that when the Europeans wanted to pay with their own products for Chinese goods, the Chinese wanted almost nothing they made and that clocks and watches were great exceptions. In any case, Schmenner does not provide evidence to support the idea that manufacturing was related to attitude towards time. Schmenner further suggests that the British were, by nature at this point of their development, exceedingly conscious of time and eager to save it, but does not provide evidence to support it. Time, of course, had different implications for different groups of people: conscripted (bought) children who were made to work 13 hours a day in British factories and who were subjected to corporal punishment; the involuntary workers used in Asia, Africa, and the West Indies; and the individuals who had the power over all these people. Work Ethic Schmenner attributes Britains success in industrialization to an ethic of everyday behavior that conduced to business success, one that stressed hard work, honesty, seriousness, the thrifty use of money and time. However, Schmenner does not provide evidence to suggest that the British had more of these qualities than the Asians or Africans. Business and government leaders in Britain were indeed successful because they had military power, but

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it is difcult to see how their success relied on an ethic of everyday behavior that stressed hard work, honesty, seriousness, and the thrifty use of money and time. Swift, Even Flow Schmenner suggests, Swift, Even Flow is a necessary condition for successfuland continuedindustrialization . . . Those nations where groups of companies routinely pursued swift, even ow should have industrialized more quickly and to a greater extent than those other nations whose companies did not pursue swift, even ow in their manufacturing sectors. The evidence presented here and in Schmenners paper does not appear to support this perspective. Further, swift, even ow appears to be a normal outcome of technology, industrialization, and better management of resources; not a necessary condition. As regards, swift, even ow resulting from steady demand, asymmetric trade enforced by military power generated a major portion of the demand. 4. Conclusions Between 1750 and 1880, Indias industrial production fell by 72 percent while Britains industrial production increased 30 times (Bairoch 1982). The two simultaneous developments of the industrialization of Britain and other countries in Europe, and the deindustrialization of a number of non-European countries, including India, were accompanied by the Europeans use of military force to occupy or control 35 percent of the land surface of the world by the year 1800, 67 percent by 1878, and over 84 percent by 1914 (Kennedy 1987, p. 150). It was not simply a matter of bringing workers together in a big building with an inanimate source of power, machines, and a large supply of raw materials. Things were more complicated than what the Schmenner thesis suggests.
Acknowledgement: I am grateful to Special Editor Robert H. Hayes and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier versions of this paper. The reviewers also brought the works of Lemire and Thompson to my attention.

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Kalyan Singhal serves on the faculty of the Merrick School of Business at the University of Baltimore. He teaches electronic commerce, supply chain management, and international operations management. He founded the Production and Operations Management Society and served as its rst president from 1989 to 1994. He is also the founder and editor-in-chief of Production and Operations Management. His work has appeared in a number of journals, including Management Science, Operations Research, Production and Operations Management, TIMS Studies in Management Sciences, Interfaces, European Journal of Operational Research, Journal of Operations Management, OMEGA, Decision Sciences, INFOR, Population Review, and the International Journal of Production Research.