RAS question
Arrange the following textile-producing countries/regions in the correct sequence of their historical importance in the global textile industry (from earliest dominance to most recent emergence): 1. Lancashire, England 2. Ahmedabad, India (pre-independence) 3. Bangladesh 4. Japan (Meiji era) Select the correct answer:
Correct answer: (A) 1 - 2 - 4 - 3 (Lancashire, Ahmedabad, Japan, Bangladesh).
The historical sequence of global textile importance is Lancashire first, Ahmedabad second, Meiji-era Japan third, and Bangladesh last.
Explanation
Lancashire comes first because modern cotton textiles were rooted in the First Industrial Revolution: its rise came in the 1760s-1780s, and Historic England describes Lancashire's textile industry as a product of the Industrial Revolution, marked by steam power and the factory-based system. Ahmedabad follows, since its cotton-mill phase began in pre-independence India, with the first cotton mill in 1861. Japan comes after that because the Meiji Restoration began in 1868 and its textile industrialisation gathered pace in the 1880s-1890s. Bangladesh is last in this sequence because it emerged much later, from the 1980s, as a major garment exporter under the Multi-Fibre Arrangement.
Why the other options are wrong
- (B) It places Meiji-era Japan before Ahmedabad, although Ahmedabad's first cotton mill in 1861 predates Japan's post-1868 Meiji textile surge.
- (C) It starts with Ahmedabad, but Lancashire's textile industry had already risen during the 1760s-1780s phase of the First Industrial Revolution.
- (D) It also puts Ahmedabad before Lancashire, reversing the basic chronology between late-eighteenth-century Lancashire and Ahmedabad's mid-nineteenth-century mill phase.
Concept
This tests the World Geography theme of industrial location and shifting textile centres over time. RAS often asks such chronology because textiles link technology, colonial trade, labour, and export-led industrialisation in one sequence.