What is the chronological sequence of the following developments ? 1. Decline in the export of Indian cotton 2. Cotton boom in India 3. Civil War in America Select the correct answer using the codes given below :

Correct — B, (b) 2, 3 and 1.

The three developments belong to one connected story, and the story is the safest guide to the order the question wants.

Before the 1860s, three-quarters of the raw cotton imported into Britain came from America, and British manufacturers had long been uneasy about depending on a single source; the Cotton Supply Association was founded in 1857 to look for alternatives, and India was the country most often named. When the American Civil War broke out in 1861, raw cotton imports from America collapsed — from over two million bales in 1861 to fifty-five thousand in 1862 — and frantic messages went out to India to increase supply. Prices rose, Bombay merchants pressed their agents into the countryside, and the cotton-growing tracts of the Deccan enjoyed what the textbooks call the cotton boom, with credit flowing to the ryots as never before. By 1865 it was over. As the Civil War ended, American production revived and Indian cotton exports to Britain steadily declined; merchants and moneylenders stopped extending long-term credit, and the debt left behind in the Deccan led on to the disturbances of the following decade.

So the fixed point is that statement 1, the decline in the export of Indian cotton, comes last: it followed the end of the war. Statement 2, the cotton boom, came before that decline, and the American war stands between the two, since it is the ending of the war that turned the one into the other.

Of the four printed orders only one satisfies both conditions — the boom before the decline, and the war between them — and that is 2, 3 and 1, the keyed sequence. It is worth being exact about one thing while learning the item: measured from its outbreak in 1861, the Civil War began before the Indian boom rather than after it, and no printed option offers that order, so the sequence has to be read as the narrative one, in which the war’s close is the hinge between the boom and the decline.

Why the others are wrong

• (a)1, 3 and 2 — The order 1, 3 and 2 puts the decline of Indian cotton exports first and the boom last, which inverts the whole episode. On this reading India’s exports fell away, an American war followed, and only then did Indian cotton enjoy its boom — leaving the boom unexplained, since what created it was precisely the interruption of American supply. The option is the sort a candidate produces by treating the three items as unconnected facts to be shuffled rather than as one causal chain. The corrective is to ask which of the three could not have happened first: a decline in exports presupposes a level from which to decline, and the level in question was reached during the boom. Chronology items built from a single narrative are nearly always solved faster by asking what caused what than by trying to date each line.
• (c)1, 2 and 3 — The order 1, 2 and 3 places the American Civil War last of the three, after both the boom and the decline. That cannot be, because the boom in Indian cotton was created by the interruption of American supplies during the war and the decline followed the war’s end and the revival of American production. The option also begins, like the previous one, with the decline, which no reading of the episode supports. It is the sequence a candidate might reach by reading the three numbered lines as a list in the order printed and assuming, as sometimes happens, that the examiner has set them out chronologically already. The numbering of statements in an item of this kind carries no information about their order; that is what the question is asking.
• (d)2, 1 and 3 — The order 2, 1 and 3 gets the first item right — the boom does come before the decline — and then places the American Civil War after both. That breaks the causal link on which the whole episode depends: the war is not an epilogue to the Indian story but the reason for it, first cutting off the supply that Lancashire depended on and then, once it ended, releasing American cotton back into the market and undoing the Indian gain. This is the strongest of the three wrong options because it begins correctly, and it is worth noticing how often that is true of ordering questions. Checking only the first item of a sequence is no protection; the discriminating comparison is usually somewhere in the middle.

The cotton boom of the 1860s is a standard illustration of how a colonial economy could be moved by events on the other side of the world, and it is examined both as chronology and as cause.

The mechanism was simple. Lancashire’s mills depended on American raw cotton for three-quarters of their supply. The American Civil War interrupted that supply almost completely, and Britain turned to India, which had suitable soil, a favourable climate and cheap labour. Prices rose sharply; Indian merchants advanced credit to cultivators in the Deccan to expand the acreage under cotton; for a few years the ryots had access to what seemed limitless loans and the export trade flourished.

The reversal was equally simple. When the war ended, American production revived and India’s advantage disappeared. Export merchants and moneylenders, seeing prices slide, stopped renewing long-term credit and began to press for repayment. The cultivators, whose land revenue demand did not fall with the price of cotton, were left in debt, and the resentment that built up in those years contributed to the agrarian disturbances of the mid-1870s in the Deccan.

The wider point, which recurs across the syllabus, is that Indian agricultural producers in the colonial period were exposed to the fluctuations of a world market they had no part in shaping, while their obligations to the state and to the moneylender were fixed in money terms and did not fluctuate at all.

Key facts

• Before the 1860s three-quarters of Britain’s raw cotton imports came from America, and the Cotton Supply Association was founded in 1857 to find alternatives.
• When the American Civil War broke out in 1861, raw cotton imports into Britain from America fell from over two million bales to fifty-five thousand bales in 1862.
• Britain turned to India, and the cotton-growing districts of the Deccan experienced a boom, with credit flowing freely to the ryots.
• By 1865 the war had ended, American production revived and Indian cotton exports to Britain steadily declined.
• Merchants and moneylenders then withdrew long-term credit and pressed for repayment, leaving a burden of debt in the Deccan countryside.
• Measured from its outbreak in 1861 the American Civil War began before the Indian boom; the sequence the option set makes available is the narrative one, in which the war’s close separates the boom from the decline.

Common traps

• Reading the three numbered lines as though the examiner had already printed them in order.
• Placing the American war after the Indian developments and so breaking the causal link that explains both.
• Beginning with the decline, which cannot come first because it presupposes the boom.
• Trying to settle the item by dating the outbreak of the war; the war spans the boom, and the printed options do not offer that order.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The cotton boom in the Deccan during the 1860s was caused principally by

  • (a)the introduction of long-staple American cotton varieties in India
  • (b)the interruption of American cotton supplies to Britain during the Civil War
  • (c)the opening of the Suez Canal
  • (d)the abolition of the export duty on Indian cotton

  Answer(b) the interruption of American cotton supplies to Britain during the Civil War — Lancashire had depended on America for three-quarters of its raw cotton, and when that supply collapsed after 1861 Britain turned to India. The Suez Canal opened only in 1869, after the boom had ended, and the other two options name developments that did not produce the surge in demand.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which of the following followed the end of the American Civil War in 1865, so far as the Deccan cotton districts were concerned ?

  • (a)A further rise in cotton prices
  • (b)The withdrawal of long-term credit by merchants and moneylenders
  • (c)A reduction in the land revenue demand
  • (d)The introduction of the permanent settlement

  Answer(b) The withdrawal of long-term credit by merchants and moneylenders — as American production revived and prices slid, export merchants and sahukars stopped extending credit and pressed for repayment. Prices fell rather than rose, the revenue demand was not reduced, and the permanent settlement belonged to eastern India and to an earlier period.